Spain and Thailand pay the same $2.66 a kilo for Peruvian squid fins, and their country averages are $3.52 and $1.60

The numbers behind this

An identity that should not be there

Spain and Thailand pay $2.66 a kilo for Peruvian squid fins. Both of them, to the cent, across every shipment since January 2025. Each figure here is a midpoint, with as many kilos leaving above it as below.

Those two are the extremes of this trade. Averaged across everything they buy, Spain pays $3.52 a kilo and Thailand $1.60, with China, the largest destination by a distance, sitting between them at $2.35.

What the coincidence rules out

If the destination were setting the price, two markets that far apart would not meet on the same cent for the same cut. Whatever decides the number is upstream of the shipping address.

Two steps of cleaning before any comparison

The first is the customs code. Frozen squid is 93% of the value declared under it, and scallops travel under the same code with a different price and a different buyer, so they come out before anything is measured.

The second is the animal. Squid leaves Peru as fillet, fins, tentacles, tube, rings, necks and whole, and those are a price ladder rather than a list. Rings run at $3.87 a kilo, tentacles at $2.71, whole at $2.53, fins at $2.31, tube at $2.28 and fillet at $2.26. Necks are $1.40, the cheapest thing in the record.

Two shopping lists

Of the 62.5 million kilos Thailand bought, 52.7 million are neck. Thailand is not a squid market in general but a neck market in particular.

Spain sits at the other end of the same ladder, taking 17.1 million kilos of rings, 31.7 million of tentacles and 21.8 million of fillet.

Two lists that far apart produce the country averages on their own, without anyone paying a premium or a discount for anything. The $1.92 between Spain and Thailand is the distance between a ring and a neck, priced in the same market, in the same months, out of the same plants.

Where the identity holds, and where it does not

Fins are the cleanest comparison, because both destinations move enough of them for the arithmetic to settle. Tentacles come close behind at $2.83 against $2.68.

Fillet does not cooperate. There the distance is real at fifty three cents, and the likeliest reading is size band rather than destination, since the grade travels inside the shipment description and not in a column that can be grouped. The defensible claim is that most of the destination gap is composition, and not that every cent of it is.

Why each market buys the end of the ladder it buys sits outside the record entirely. Thailand runs one of the largest seafood reprocessing industries in the world, and a reprocessor buys an input rather than a product, while Spain buys much closer to the shelf, where a ring arrives already a ring. That reading fits everything measured here and is proved by none of it.

What the average is actually doing

The country average shows up reliably in the commercial conversation. It is what gets quoted back when a price feels high, and what a plant reaches for when it wants to argue that a market pays well. Both uses describe a basket and call it a price.

Fixing the cut, the size band and the month turns the destination into a different kind of question, one about what a market wants to receive rather than what it is willing to pay. A plant that makes only fillet never appears in a search for rings, however sharp its price looks against an average that was never about it.

Common questions

What does Peruvian squid sell for by destination?

Averaged over every cut, Spain pays $3.52 a kilo, China $2.35 and Thailand $1.60. Those are three different shopping baskets.

Does the gap survive when the same cut is compared?

Largely no. On fins Spain and Thailand both sit at a median of $2.66. On tentacles Spain is $2.83 and Thailand $2.68. The wide gap only exists once every cut is averaged together.

What is Thailand actually buying?

Squid necks. 52.7 of its 62.5 million kilos are the neck cut, which is the cheapest cut in the whole record at a median of $1.44 a kilo.

Which cuts carry a premium?

Rings, at a median of $3.87 a kilo against $1.44 for necks. Tentacles are $2.71, fillet $2.26 and neck $1.40.

Does the customs code hold only squid?

No. Frozen squid is 93% of the value under it. Scallops share the same code and are a different animal, a different price and a different buyer.