Marketing results indicate that developing new fish products and competing against established brands from the northern hemisphere can be far more complicated and an much more of an uphill battle than anticipated. Efforts by the local fishing industry to penetrate the Japanese market with horse mackerel fillets have been very disappointing to date. Value Horse mackerel is the species fished by the midwater trawl industry in huge quantities. It is a low-value species in the pelagic group and is the most prolific fish species in Namibian waters.
Several factors contribute to the fish's status as a low-value bulk commodity.
First of all, the fish is relatively small, so any filleting yields only two small cuts. On its flanks, the fish has two scoot bones which are difficult to remove with conventional skinning machines. Lastly, horse mackerel's acidity level is higher than pilchard causing a corrosive action when the fish is canned. Despite all the factors against it, the species' potential to provide higher-value products has been investigated extensively over the past decade. Purely from an economic point of view, it makes good sense to develop higher-value products from the most abundant fish resource, as it will dramatically increase revenues if a species that is fished in such huge quantities can be processed and marketed at higher prices.