Processing Yield and Recovery Rates

Processing yield is the percentage of live or round weight recovered as a defined product form, and recovery rate tracks how that percentage changes through successive processing steps. Standard yields are well established: gutted head-on fish typically recovers 80-88 percent of round weight, head-off gutted 55-70 percent, skinless boneless fillet 30-45 percent depending on species (salmon near 50-60 percent, pangasius or tilapia near 30-38 percent), and shrimp tail meat from whole shell-on shrimp roughly 40-65 percent depending on size and whether cooked or raw. The economic meaning is direct: at a fillet yield of 35 percent, every kg of fillet carries nearly 3 kg of live fish cost, so live-fish price and yield together determine whether processing adds value or destroys it. Recovery management focuses on trim, broken fillets, glazing water added to frozen product (legally capped, commonly 8-12 percent), and byproduct credit from heads, frames and viscera sold for fish meal or oil, which can return several percent of total value. Operators measure recovery per shift and per raw-material size class, because small fish lose disproportionately more in gutting and heading. For farm-gate decisions, knowing the buyer's yield on each size class turns market grading into a true farm-gate optimization rather than a price-per-kg comparison.