John Bostock joined with colleagues from other partners in the EU Horizon 2020 Primefish project to deliver a Summer School on fisheries and aquaculture economics and marketing from 6th to 10th August 2018. The teaching drew on the research findings of several project workpackages and introduced the new online tool "Prime DSS".

Some of participants and tutors at the end of the summer school

A mix of presentations were made by academic researchers and industry representatives whilst practical work included practicing sensory testing and a "mystery shopper" trip to a local supermarket to examine marketing strategies in action. Running through the one-week course was a group-based competition to develop a Seafood Business Plan. Three teams used the business canvas model to developed plans for the following ventures:

A shrimp farm in the north of Germany.
A biodegradable alternative to the plastic in seafood packaging.
A sensor to be added to seafood packages for monitoring conditions & safety of product from production to distribution.

The plans were assessed by Gerd Bollmann, Marketing Manager of Greenland Seafood. All project achieved high scores with small differences between them. Finally the group formed by Summer School participants Giorgios Mantas and Julen Díaz Ramírez was awarded the overall prize with their project on a sensor to assure seafood safety.

Rosa Chapela introducing the PrimeFish project to Summer School participants

John Bostock presented on value chain analysis, upgrading, competitiveness and strategic positioning using material from reports prepared under Workpackage 3 of the PrimeFish project. This is led by Dr Francis Murray and involves Dimitar Taskov who is completing his PhD in association with the project. The reports are available on the PrimeFish website at http://www.primefish.eu/project-results where some of the teaching materials can also be found.

John Bostock presenting the salmon value chain