How French fish auctions work:from the boat to the importer

01

What is a French fish auction?

The auction is the first sale of the fish after the boat. Under EU law, buyers of fishery products from a fishing vessel must be registered, and first sales are recorded in sales notes (Council Regulation (EC) No 1224/2009, article 59). The French rural and maritime fishing code describes this first placing on the market as made "with a view to wholesale" (en vue de leur vente en gros, article D932-8).

• The fish is sold in lots. A lot is usually one or more boxes of the same species, the same size grade and the same freshness category. The buyer takes the whole lot: nobody picks 4 kg out of a box.
• The sale is automated in the main ports. Boulogne-sur-Mer has sold electronically since February 2008. At Lorient, lots pass on two parallel conveyors and the auction is descending, lasting on average less than ten seconds per lot. Le Guilvinec has used an automated weighing and sale line since 2022, with boxes identified by a chip. At Concarneau, lots pass on conveyors.
• Once the lot is awarded, it belongs to the buyer. Preparation, icing, transport and any unsold fish are the buyer's business.
• Each hall is run by a port operator, under operating rules set by the prefect (articles D932-11 and D932-12): Port Boulogne Calais at Boulogne-sur-Mer, the SEM Lorient-Keroman at Lorient, and, since 1 January 2026, the Société des pêches de Cornouaille at Le Guilvinec and Concarneau.

Not all French seafood goes through an auction. The Lorient Keroman seafood cluster handles about 80,000 t a year, far more than the auction alone: the port's landings are added to the direct purchases of fish merchants and processors. Concarneau's tropical tuna is frozen at sea, landed outside France, mainly in Victoria (Seychelles), and goes mostly to canneries: it is never sold at the Concarneau auction.

02

Who may buy at a French fish auction?

To bid, a buyer declares itself to the manager of the auction hall (French rural and maritime fishing code, articles D932-8 and D932-9):

• Proof of registration in the French trade and companies register or the national business register, for the food trades or seafood processing;
• A VAT number;
• A financial guarantee (cautionnement) that covers its purchases, since the hall pays the shipowners for the lots sold.

The hall's own fees are added to the hammer price: ask the port for its fee schedule.

Who actually buys depends on the port. At Boulogne-sur-Mer, the sale is open to fish merchants, fishmongers, restaurateurs, wholesalers and processors, in the room or remotely with a personal access code, after registration with SOFETRA, the auction's guarantee body (Port Boulogne Calais); more than 80 companies buy there, according to the Agglomération du Boulonnais. At Lorient, the auction has 240 regular buyers, including about fifty fish merchants and more than 100 fishmongers, and buyers can bid online on every sale, inshore and offshore (Lorient Keroman). At Le Guilvinec, buyers bid on site or remotely.

03

From the boat to the importer: the chain

04

When do the main French auctions sell?

Sale times: Port Boulogne Calais; Société des pêches de Cornouaille (Le Guilvinec, Concarneau); Lorient Keroman. Sales, ranks and species: FranceAgriMer, auction sales declared in 2024, French vessels only.

Each port has its own profile. Boulogne-sur-Mer sells about twice as much fish as Le Guilvinec or Lorient, at a much lower average auction price (€2.76/kg against €4.84 and €4.55/kg in 2024): a volume auction of white fish, small pelagics and cephalopods. Lorient is the first French auction for langoustine and sells almost all the blue ling sold at auction in France; it presents itself as the first port for landings of live langoustine, sold a few hours after landing. Le Guilvinec is the first French auction for monkfish. Concarneau sells little volume at one of the highest average prices in France.

Most of the sales happen early in the French morning. The exception is Le Guilvinec's inshore sale at 3:30 pm: according to the French port page, that fish is generally prepared in the evening and then shipped, depending on the merchant. Plan weekends too: Boulogne-sur-Mer and Concarneau sell Monday to Saturday, Le Guilvinec Monday to Friday, and Lorient's offshore sale runs Monday to Friday.

05

What does an importer actually buy, and from whom?

An importer buys from a fish merchant, sometimes from a wholesaler, not from the auction. What reaches the importer is the merchant's daily price list (mercuriale): the list of what landed, with presentation, size grade, origin and price per kilo, valid for the day and "subject to landing". It arrives by email, spreadsheet, PDF or WhatsApp, early in the morning, French time. Most merchants in the ports send one to their customers, with the species of the day, the size grades and the prices.

A merchant's range is not limited to one auction. Around Le Guilvinec, the pays bigouden has two other auctions, Saint-Guénolé and Loctudy, so local merchants can buy at several sales close by. Concarneau merchants also buy at Le Guilvinec, Loctudy and Lorient: one supplier can put together a shipment with langoustine from Concarneau, monkfish from Le Guilvinec and hake from Lorient. At Boulogne-sur-Mer, the Capécure area gathers nearly 200 seafood companies (Port Boulogne Calais, 2025), and a Boulogne merchant offers both the auction catch and imported fish, fresh or frozen: the price list must then state clearly the origin, catch area and landing date of each line.

This is where LiveCriée helps: it reads your suppliers' price lists every morning, whatever the format (PDF, spreadsheet, email or WhatsApp photo), and puts them in one table, cheapest first, by species, size grade and presentation. Your suppliers change nothing.

Size grades: three grids that do not match

A merchant buys in categories, sorts again in its workshop, then sells in commercial grades. "Calibre 1" on an auction slip is the largest category: for Dover sole, 500 g and more. On a price list, "20/30" for langoustine means 20 to 30 pieces per kilo, so 33 to 50 g each: the smaller the number, the larger the langoustine. "1/2 kg" at one merchant and "1.5/2.5 kg" at another do not describe the same lot.

Labelling: what follows each lot

Under EU rules, fresh fish sold to consumers or restaurants must come with five pieces of information (Regulation (EU) No 1379/2013, article 35):

• the commercial name and the scientific name;
• the production method: "caught", "caught in freshwater" or "farmed";
• the catch area, with the name of the sub-area or division for the North-East Atlantic (FAO area 27) and the Mediterranean (37), for example 27.7.g, Celtic Sea North, and the fishing gear category, one of seven: seines, trawls, gillnets and similar nets, surrounding nets and lift nets, hooks and lines, dredges, pots and traps;
• the mention "defrosted" where the product has been frozen and thawed;
• the date of minimum durability, where it applies.

Each lot must stay traceable from the catch to retail (Regulation (EC) No 1224/2009, article 58). Since 10 January 2026, downstream operators (fish merchants, wholesalers, distributors) must pass this information on electronically (Regulation (EU) 2023/2842); pending a common format, the French Ministry of the Sea accepts an email from one operator to the next, with the information in the body or in an attached PDF. The French port pages advise buyers to require, for every lot, the commercial name, the scientific name, the catch area and the fishing gear.

The destination market adds its own requirements on arrival. For the UAE, EU exporters state "WILD CAUGHT" or "FARMED" (Sea Fisheries Protection Authority, Ireland). Our pages for Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai give the local rules.

06

How does the morning sale fit an export shipment?

The auction sets the start of the day; the supplier and the forwarder set the rest.

Flight times: the carriers' published flight times for their nonstop flights, which vary by carrier and season. Reading by the editorial team; to confirm with your forwarder.

The French morning is the afternoon in Hong Kong and Singapore and the morning in Dubai: buyers there see the day's price lists before their own business day ends. Our Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai pages convert the sale times to local time.

Two points to settle with the merchant before the first order:

• The weights. Ask for the net weight of fish and the gross weight of the box: you pay for the fish on net weight, and for the flight on the chargeable weight, the higher of the gross weight and the volumetric weight (6,000 cm³ per kg under the standard IATA rule).
• The documents. Since 3 June 2025, French export health certificates for fishery products to non-EU countries are requested only through Expadon 2, the French Ministry of Agriculture's platform; the merchant or the forwarder files the request, and the département's official veterinary services sign it. A catch certificate is needed only when the destination country requires it for catches by EU vessels (Regulation (EC) No 1005/2008, article 15); in France it is validated by the national catch-certification unit in Boulogne-sur-Mer. The full list is in the sourcing guide.