What causes the raw material cost of skipjack tuna to be driven down significantly at the commodity level?
High-yield harvesting spreads operational costs across a huge volume of product
The economic advantage of skipjack stems directly from the efficiency of its capture method combined with the resulting volume. Because skipjack form dense, large schools, fishing operations using techniques like purse seining can harvest immense tonnages in a single effort. This massive yield means that fixed operating costs associated with running a fishing vessel—such as fuel consumption, crew wages, and vessel maintenance—are distributed across a very large number of individual fish. This high volume-to-cost ratio drastically reduces the overhead allocated to each unit of raw skipjack material, establishing the foundation for its lower price point in the market.
