Changes in strategic positioning in the Icelandic fish industry´s value chain

As in many resource based industries where the resources are in abundance but the home market is small, the solution is to export goods processed from these resources. Consequently, domestic activities must be linked to international activities. One of the distinctive competences of the Icelandic fishing industry was rooted in the former oligopolistic structure of the producers ’ marketing and sales organisations (MSOs). The MSOs were dealt a considerable blow with the abolition of their exclusive export licences in the early 1990s when smaller competitors in sales and marketing entered the industry and then ceased to exist as major players in the industry in the late 1990s when they had given way to both the small independent MSOs and the individual company marketing divisions of the bigger fishing companies. Thus the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) took over the administration of the global value chain of the industry. In many ways a higher level of competitiveness can be assumed to be possible through the cooperation in the former oligopolistic MSOs which forced producers to take part a