Statistics Sweden released its July foreign-trade tables this morning, 28 September, and for the first time NorthSouth HQ has run the numbers in the direction that gets less attention: what Sweden sells to Portugal. The answer is SEK 5,566 million of goods in January–July 2026 (about €500 million), down 11.3% from SEK 6,275 million in the same months of 2025 and below the SEK 5,924 million of 2024. July alone came in at SEK 672 million, 9.7% below July 2025. Swedish exports to the world grew 3.2% over the same period, to SEK 1,219 billion, so Portugal — which takes 0.46% of Swedish goods exports — is losing ground as a destination.
The decline matters more because the other direction is moving the opposite way. Swedish imports from Portugal reached SEK 6,636 million in January–July, up 9.3%, as reported in NorthSouth HQ’s half-year analysis earlier this month. Put the two together and Sweden, which ran a SEK 206 million goods surplus with Portugal in the first seven months of 2025, now runs a deficit of SEK 1,070 million. The full year 2025 was Sweden’s best on record for exports to Portugal, at SEK 10,201 million, up 8.3% on 2024; 2026 is on course to give most of that back.
The largest export is not Swedish at all
The single biggest line in Sweden’s export ledger to Portugal is chapter 03, fish, at SEK 1,697 million for the seven months — 30% of everything Sweden dispatches to Portugal. Within it, SEK 1,186 million is dried, salted or brined fish (CN 0305): bacalhau. Sweden has no cod fishery of that scale. The explanation is in the import side of the same database: Sweden imported SEK 1,637 million of salted and dried fish from Norway in January–July, and dispatched SEK 1,590 million of the same category to all destinations, three-quarters of it to Portugal. Norwegian klippfisk trucked south from the west-coast plants is cleared into the EU in Sweden and then travels to Portugal as an intra-EU dispatch, which is how Statistics Sweden counts it. Norway’s own seafood statistics, which NorthSouth HQ covered on 5 September, record Portugal as the largest clipfish market in the world; the Swedish ledger is one of the roads that trade takes.
The road is carrying less this year. Volumes of salted and dried fish dispatched to Portugal fell from 10,874 tonnes to 7,223 tonnes, down 34%, while the value fell only 18%, from SEK 1,449 million: the implied price per tonne rose from about SEK 133,000 to SEK 164,000, a 23% increase that matches the record clipfish prices Norwegian exporters reported in July and August. Fresh fish (CN 0302), largely Norwegian salmon on the same route, was flat at SEK 448 million. In the full year 2025, fish accounted for SEK 3,011 million of Sweden’s SEK 10.2 billion exports to Portugal, of which salt cod was SEK 2,180 million.
Cars halved, pharma and stainless steel grew
Strip out fish and the Swedish-made part of the export book is SEK 3,869 million, down 10%. The sharpest fall is in vehicles (chapter 87): SEK 566 million, down 26.9%, with passenger cars (CN 8703) halving from SEK 609 million to SEK 305 million. Tractors (SEK 48 million, up from 36) and parts (SEK 48 million, up from 37) went the other way, and buses appeared for the first time at SEK 5 million. Machinery (chapter 84) fell 23.8% to SEK 464 million, with data-processing machines, pumps and heat-treatment equipment all down; only sorting and screening machinery and general-purpose mechanical appliances rose. Mineral fuels dropped 62.9% to SEK 93 million and wood pulp 52.1% to SEK 70 million — the two lines that had inflated 2025.
Three lines grew. Pharmaceuticals (chapter 30) rose 8.9% to SEK 659 million, the second-largest export chapter, driven by packaged medicaments (CN 3004) at SEK 505 million against SEK 449 million; blood and immunological products held at SEK 148 million. Iron and steel (chapter 72) rose 29.9% to SEK 294 million, led by flat-rolled stainless steel (CN 7219) at SEK 75 million against SEK 54 million and by cold-rolled non-alloy sheet. Articles of iron and steel (chapter 73) added 37.1% to SEK 66 million. Cereals, absent in 2025, reached SEK 56 million. Optical and measuring instruments rose 11.5% to SEK 94 million, and insulated cable (CN 8544) rose to SEK 61 million from 46, although the wider electrical chapter fell 15.4% to SEK 238 million because telephone and network equipment (CN 8517) dropped from SEK 141 million to SEK 83 million.
| CN chapter | Jan–Jul 2026, SEK m | Jan–Jul 2025, SEK m | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 03 Fish (of which 0305 dried/salted 1,186) | 1,697 | 1,960 | −13.4% |
| 30 Pharmaceutical products | 659 | 605 | +8.9% |
| 87 Vehicles | 566 | 774 | −26.9% |
| 84 Machinery and mechanical appliances | 464 | 608 | −23.8% |
| 72 Iron and steel | 294 | 226 | +29.9% |
| 85 Electrical machinery and equipment | 238 | 281 | −15.4% |
| 39 Plastics | 235 | 250 | −5.9% |
| 48 Paper and paperboard | 156 | 189 | −17.7% |
| 38 Miscellaneous chemical products | 122 | 139 | −12.0% |
| 76 Aluminium | 99 | 97 | +2.0% |
| 32 Tanning and dyeing extracts, paints | 96 | 103 | −7.0% |
| 90 Optical and measuring instruments | 94 | 84 | +11.5% |
| 27 Mineral fuels | 93 | 251 | −62.9% |
| 44 Wood | 87 | 100 | −13.5% |
| 47 Wood pulp | 70 | 146 | −52.1% |
| All goods | 5,566 | 6,275 | −11.3% |
Source: Statistics Sweden, ExpTotalKNMan (exports by CN chapter and country of destination, not adjusted for non-response), extracted 28 September 2026. Chapters ranked by 2026 value.
Month by month
The 2026 profile is flatter than last year’s. Monthly dispatches to Portugal ran SEK 692 million in January, 750 in February, 690 in March, 942 in April, 854 in May, 966 in June and 672 in July. In 2025 the same months read 780, 639, 909, 1,080, 927, 1,197 and 744: every month except February is down, and the spring peak that in 2025 carried April and June above SEK 1 billion has not repeated. July, the weakest month in both years, is the one month in which salt cod actually rose — SEK 256 million against 230 — while cars, machinery, electrical equipment and pharmaceuticals all fell.
Why this matters for the corridor
For Swedish exporters the Portuguese market has been quietly good — a record SEK 10.2 billion in 2025 — and 2026 is the first year in three in which it is shrinking, at a time when Portuguese demand for cars, machinery and construction inputs is being reshaped by Chinese entrants and by the end of the Recovery and Resilience Plan cycle. The categories still growing, pharmaceuticals, specialty steel, instruments and cable, are the ones where Swedish suppliers sell on specification rather than price. For the corridor as a whole, the flip in the balance is the headline: Portugal now sells Sweden more than it buys, on the strength of the electrical, ores, instruments and furniture lines NorthSouth HQ documented in the half-year import analysis. And a quarter of what Sweden “sells” Portugal is Norwegian cod in transit, a reminder that the Nordic–Portuguese trade map runs through Swedish customs points as much as Swedish factories.
Sources: Statistics Sweden (SCB), foreign trade in goods by CN commodity group and trading partner, tables ExpTotalKNMan and ImpTotalKNMan, monthly data to July 2026 (table updated 28 September 2026), extracted the same day; Norwegian Seafood Council monthly export statistics (August 2026). SEK–EUR conversion at approximately 11.1.