By the 2000s, Spain was the major beneficiary of this tariff peak, it accounted for 71 per cent of EU production in 2011 and since 2001 has been the world’s second-largest producer of canned tuna, behind only Thailand (Globefish 2014). Given the highly competitive conditions in the Spanish retail market, this market share indicates the effectiveness of tariff protection, alongside various productivity-enhancing strategies of firms (Hamilton et al. The EU market for canned tuna is the largest in the world and preferences available to developing countries can be grouped into two types. Canned tuna is widely recognised as one of the very few success stories of industrial upgrading sparked by the Lome Conventions.