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Read the country-level reports
Executive Summary
About this report
Shrimp are the animal most commonly farmed for food, with 230 billion alive at any point in time. Since 2021, several groups have worked to secure substantial shrimp welfare commitments from 16 major retailers across the UK, Germany, France, and the Netherlands.[1]
To understand the potential impact of these commitments, we estimate the number of shrimp affected by commitments established in the UK, France, and Germany. We also estimate the number of farmed shrimp sourced in Spain, France, and Germany, because data suggest these are Europe’s largest farmed shrimp markets (Shrimp Insights, 2023; Shrimp Insights, 2024; Moulange et al., 2024).
The European overview presents the aggregate picture and gives comparisons across the four countries we analyzed. Country-specific analysis follows in four companion reports—one each for Spain, the UK, France, and Germany—each containing the full detail on market size, company estimates, and uncertainty, as well as methods specific to that country.
These reports present preliminary analyses for these countries. We aim to share more of our underlying data and methods, and potentially estimates for more countries in the future.
This is release v2 of this report series (September 2026). Figures are revised as estimates improve — please include the release date when citing. See the Edits section below for a summary of what changed in this release.
Summary
- Largest country-level market: Of Spain, the UK, France, and Germany, we estimate that Spain has the largest concentrated retail market at approximately 3.59 billion shrimp/yr (France ~3.49 B; UK ~2.51 B; Germany ~1.83 B).
- Largest domestic retailer: The largest single domestic retailer footprint we found is for Mercadona in Spain, estimated to source ~948 million shrimp per year.
- Largest multinational retailer: Accounting for multinational footprints, Carrefour is the largest shrimp retailer that sells in any of our focus countries at around 2.73 billion shrimp per year worldwide. Of these, ~1.09 billion are sold in our focus countries (Spain ~338 M, France ~749 M; Carrefour does not sell in the UK or Germany).
- Market concentration: In all four countries we analyzed, market concentration is high, with the top few retailers sourcing a large share of the shrimp sold in each country’s retail market. In Germany, three retailers account for ~66% of the country’s total retail shrimp volume, in France ~47%, in the UK ~46%, and in Spain ~38%. Germany is the most concentrated of the four, Spain the least.
- Policy coverage: Across the 14 companies with published welfare policies[2] in our focus countries, we estimate roughly ~1.97 billion farmed shrimp per year are covered in our focus countries[3], and will be impacted once all policies are fully implemented. Across these companies’ full worldwide footprints, coverage extends to roughly ~2.62 B shrimp/yr.
- We estimate that, across the retailers in our dataset, up to 292 thousand broodstock shrimp may be needed to produce all of the shrimp in these retailers’ domestic supply chains (up to 448 thousand for their worldwide supply chains)[4].
- Established welfare commitments often cover only part of a retailer’s shrimp supply. Commitments vary in their coverage of the retailer’s supply chain, often only applying to specific locations, specific species, and often only own-brand shrimp products. If every established commitment were extended to its full worldwide footprint, all products, and all relevant species — coverage would extend by roughly ~4.72 B additional shrimp/yr.
- Company-level shrimp estimates may change by up to +/- 10% per year (90% credible interval): We estimate general retail market shares move by roughly 5% per year on average, but any single company’s rate could plausibly fall anywhere in a +/-10% range;[5] separately, some project a 7.4% CAGR for the shrimp market worldwide. Additional change may come from changes in shrimp-specific competitive positioning of specific companies, and product development.
Overview of country-level results
Table 1: Market size and species breakdown by country.
| Country | Apparent consumption (farmed shrimp, tonnes/yr) | Market size (individuals/yr) | Species breakdown (% of farmed) | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total market | Retail market | Concentrated retail market | Mapped retailers | P. vannamei | P. monodon | ||
| Spain | 63,179 | 5.32 B | 3.99 B | 3.59 B | 3.21 B * | 96.7% | 1.4% |
| UK | 47,281 | 3.98 B | 2.79 B | 2.51 B | 2.44 B | 81.2% | 16.5% |
| France | 69,000 | 5.81 B | 4.65 B | 3.49 B | 3.44 B | 88.4% | 11.0% |
| Germany | 32,267 | 2.72 B | 2.17 B | 1.83 B | 1.93 B | ~82%** | ~5%** |
| Total | 211,727 | 17.83 B | 13.60 B | 11.41 B | 11.01 B | – | – |
* For Spain, we mapped retailers and one distributor, so we accounted for overlap between distributors and retailers, who may be sourcing and selling the same shrimp.
** Germany’s species split is based on worldwide farmed production, not estimated from German imports.
Edits
We added data, improved methodology, and fixed issues as follows. We report all changes changing estimates by >100M shrimps per year in detail. We expect future releases to extend this coverage and hone our estimates. Because figures are revised as estimates improve, please include the release date when citing this series.
Sept 1st:
- We added an analysis of the shrimp market in Germany, mapping ~2 B shrimps per year to companies. Additionally, while many of the largest multinationals were already in our dataset, adding better estimates for Germany also reduced our subjective uncertainty about these numbers by roughly a factor of 2 for ~2B shrimps.
- We corrected a calculation error in the first release, which means France’s figures are shifted upward in this release. Previously, the calculation mistakenly referred to the UK market size, not the French market size. Correcting this increased all numbers at the company level or greater detail by 39%.
- We added Coopérative U’s newly published welfare policy. This is estimated to cover more than 100M of their estimated sales of over 400M.
- We corrected the scope of Les Mousquetaires’ commitment to own-brand products within France. Previously, we estimated it as covering the full supply chain. However, since the group only reports progress for France, we instead decided to assume the commitment only covered France, and updated our estimates to cover only France accordingly. This moved them down to almost 200M shrimps covered from over 700M.
- We stated a methodology for defining companies in complex multinational structures, and Lidl’s figures now appear under its parent company, the Schwarz Group. Previously, we almost always reported against the highest-level parent company or holding group that primarily sells food. We now always report as such.
- We corrected our methodology for reporting the percentage of the market controlled by the top 3 firms. Previously, we had summed the market shares reported in our sources. However, these sources often report on a subset of the retail market as a whole, inflating those numbers relative to the total retail market. We now calculate the share of the top 3 consistently as
Number of shrimps sold by the top 3 companies ÷ Number of shrimps sold in the total retail market
We also removed purchasing groups from the calculation for simplicity and clarity. This reduced reported market concentration by an average of 11% and did not result in any re-ranking by concentration.
- We made a few other methodological and editorial improvements and corrected several smaller issues.
- Our estimates do not currently cover the Netherlands as we aim to focus on the largest farmed shrimp markets. This excludes two retailer commitments from our dataset. ↑
- Our report includes time-bound policies with meaningful inclusion of electrical stunning at slaughter. ↑
- Coverage and expansion estimates use country-wide own-brand fractions, not company-level data. See the European overview report’s Methods section for more detail. ↑
- See the European overview report’s Broodstock Calculation section for the formula. ↑
- Our own estimate, read off general grocery market shares for ten large French retailers in 2018 and 2026. We read that history as roughly a 5% CAGR on average, with a 90% credible range of about +/-10% for any one company. Two caveats: comparing two endpoints understates year-to-year movement, and the sample is a single country, so treat these as order-of-magnitude. ↑