EU CATCH certificate: what the EU requires since 2026 and how the file is built
Since 10 January 2026, every fish shipment entering the European Union needs a digital catch certificate with precise data: vessel IMO number, trip start date, fishing gear and catch location. Argentina already issues the digital certificate, so the bottleneck moved to the company: if the shipment is not traced back to the haul, those fields have to be reconstructed by hand, shipment by shipment. Automating it means joining three sources that already exist.
What CATCH is and what changed
CATCH is the digital system the European Union uses to verify that imported fish does not come from illegal fishing. It replaces hundreds of thousands of paper catch certificates a year, and it is not just a format change: it expanded the required data.
| Data required per shipment | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Vessel IMO number | Vessel registry |
| Fishing trip start date | Fishing report / dispatch |
| Type of fishing gear | Permit and fishing report |
| Precise catch location | Satellite monitoring (VMS) crossed with the haul |
| Species, presentation and batch weight | Plant batch |
The key fact for the urgency: it is mandatory since 10 January 2026 for all European importers, and Spain, one of the main buyers of Argentine shrimp, requires the certificate to clear the goods.
Why the bottleneck moved to the company
Argentina was the first country in the world approved by the European Union to issue the catch certificate digitally, through its official systems. In other words: the State has already solved its side.
But the certificate is fed with data that lives inside the company, and that is the problem. An export shipment is built by combining production from several trips, from several vessels, processed in different batches. To declare the IMO, trip date, gear and location of each kilo, you have to be able to trace the shipment back to the haul that produced it.
If that traceability does not exist (if trip, haul and batch live in separate spreadsheets that are never crossed), the file is built by hand, reconstructing the origin shipment by shipment. It is pure administrative work, with error and rejection risk at destination.
How to automate it: join three sources that already exist
The good news is that the three sources already exist and are mandatory. The work is not generating new data, it is joining it:
| Source | What it contributes | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Satellite monitoring (VMS) | Vessel position, and with it the catch location | Already mandatory |
| Electronic fishing report | Trip start, gear, species and catches | Already mandatory |
| Plant batch | Which production went into each export shipment | In the company |
A system that consolidates the three and keeps the trace batch by batch builds the CATCH file on its own: for each shipment it knows which trips it came from, which vessels, with what gear and from what position. What is manual reconstruction today becomes a button, and along the way you get the traceability that MSC certification and destination audits also ask for.
It is the first module we implement for fishing companies: scoped, an obligation with a passed deadline, and a result verifiable in weeks.