Three years in the making and unlike any transparency tool in the seafood industry, BioMar announces Discover, the latest tool from their BioSustain programme, in the launch of their 2018 Sustainability Report. The report is showcasing BioMar’s continuous focus on driving sustainable initiatives across the aquaculture industry and throughout the value chain and now right into the hands of the consumer.
BioMar’s Sustainability Report is a comprehensive report that is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. It gives complete transparency on BioMar operations not only with their sustainability KPIs but their finances and growth ambitions. This year’s report also takes an in-depth look at emerging novel raw materials and the evolution of salmon feed as BioMar continues playing its part in transforming aquaculture.
“Sustainable Development is a continuous process, and we are now moving into a new phase where we can see new technologies melt together the physical, digital and biological worlds. We call it Sustainability 4.0.”, said Carlos Diaz, CEO, BioMar Group in the BioMar 2018 Sustainability Report.
The report introduces Discover, a consumer facing digital tool that traces the sustainability practices of aquaculture from farm-gate right back to the environmental impact of all raw materials. Through Discover, consumers have access to more information than ever before to help them make an informed seafood choice.
Behind Discover are several technologies and tools from BioMar’s BioSustain programme that calculate and calibrate huge pools of data to spit out the most up-to-date and accurate information. As various conditions change including the feed recipe or raw material selection, so will the data. The Sustainable Solution Steering® methodology was adapted to evaluate every raw material in the BioMar portfolio. This first-of-its-kind in the aquaculture industry has been combined with BioMar’s Eco-Efficiency tool that is able to determine the environmental footprint of every feed recipe created by BioMar, including calculations on such things as CO2 emissions, energy use and water use.
For the Discover transparency tool to be created and implemented, it required multi-level value chain collaboration for the collection of accurate data from raw material suppliers to the farmer. Kvarøy, salmon producers from Norway, have been the first farmers to bring Discover Kvarøy to high-end retailers. Seafood shoppers can now scan a QR code through their Smartphone and have access to an array of information, including sustainability impact, nutritional profile, seafood origins, certifications and feed ingredients.
“Sustainability is at the core of what we do and we want to continue to lead the acceptance and adoption of real change. We hope that providing transparency and traceability through Discover will help consumers in their decision-making process and give them some reassurance in their seafood selection. They will discover that not all seafood is made the same and they are able to make choices depending on what is most important to them, be it nutrition, the environmental impact or even the origin of raw materials”, said Vidar Gundersen, Sustainability Director, BioMar Group.
For more information, follow this link to the BioMar Sustainability Report 2018.
BioMar is a leading supplier of high-performance feed to the global aquaculture industry. Currently, BioMar operates 14 feed factories and is currently constructing another two. The factories are placed across the globe in Norway, Chile, Denmark, Scotland, Spain, France, Greece, Turkey, China, Costa Rica, Ecuador and very soon also in Australia. Roughly one out of five farmed fish produced in Europe, South and Central America is fed on BioMar feed. Worldwide, BioMar supplies feed to around 80 countries and for more than 45 different fish species. BioMar is wholly owned by the Danish industrial group Schouw & Co, which is listed on the NASDAQ, Copenhagen. Learn more about the BioMar Group on www.biomar.com
