When the UK government slapped sanctions on Russia’s luxury goods exports in April, caviar was on the list. But in reality it’s not the invasion of Ukraine that has hit the industry the hardest: It’s Brexit.
It has been almost 15 years since legal exports of the Russian sturgeon eggs could be found on the UK market. Premium caviar now comes from farms in Belgium and France. And, since 2021, when Brexit took effect, it has been harder to get.
“A process that used to take 48 hours now takes up to six to eight weeks,” said Raphaelle Simmons, managing director at the UK branch of Petrossian, a caviar house founded in Paris in 1920, where tins of caviar start at £66 ($81) for 30 grams.
Laura King, who founded British company King’s Fine Food in 2004, has had similar issues, with delivery times ranging up to six weeks. Now, after what she called “a few good years in lockdown,” with customers spending extra cash on caviar, she is worried about rising inflation.
Indeed, prices are up. For Simmons, with the added complications of the pandemic and war, post-Brexit Britain’s restrictions have seen caviar-related import and export costs rise between 5% and 20%. She says that her customers are primarily restaurants and luxury hotels, and are sympathetic to the corresponding price increase. “They understand that it’s not just us, everything coming from Europe is more expensive.”
The long delays come after Russia and Iran’s overfishing of the Caspian sea nearly drove sturgeon to extinction in the 1980s and ’90s. In 2008, a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) permit became obligatory for each batch of caviar exported and imported internationally.
Now, when a quantity of farmed caviar leaves Belgium or France to come to the UK, it is examined by customs officers at both borders, and CITES certificates state that it comes from a legal and trusted source. This costs around £90 per batch, with caviar usually sold in 30, 50 or 125 gram tins. “You don’t make any money,” said Harry Ferguson, operations director at Devon-headquartered Exmoor Caviar, one of the UK’s few existing farms, about the smaller orders, which are most affected by license and permit fees.
UK-based suppliers are now adapting to Brexit restrictions. Good, non-sterilized caviar has a shelf-life of about 56 days, once tinned. If it takes six weeks to arrive, its UK lifespan is only 14 days; eight weeks, and it goes straight to the bin.
The Brexit caviar challenge has, however, proved to be a small piece of good news for UK brands. Ferguson said that with people looking to buy from British sources as much as they can, growth has “certainly stepped up.” For Exmoor Caviar’s UK farm, he predicted a 20% to 30% increase on last year for the new season starting in October.
“People would look to buy an English product rather than what they previously perceived as Russian, even from a different supplier, even though it wouldn’t have been Russian,” Ferguson said. “There might have been an association with Russia so they might have now come to Exmoor Caviar because it’s British rather than the supplier they were using before.”
Petrossian has set up a maturation lab in England, which lets them export raw caviar to the UK in bulk (mother containers of about 1.8 kilos each) and tin it on site, saving around 5% in costs. This means more flexibility and “a lot less wastage,” said Simmons. “Before we had to anticipate, two months in advance, how much caviar we are going to sell.”
The Ukraine war has not failed to affect the UK caviar world, though its impact has not been brought on directly by sanctions.
“Products like vodka and caviar are steeped in Russian history,” said Ferguson. “People stop buying it because they think it’s Russian.” Consumers have, incorrectly, assumed that Petrossian was Russian, Simmons said, leading to a short slight dip in sales at the onset of the war.
