At the recent Aqua Nor 2017, the BioMar Group celebrated the 10th anniversary of its BioSustain™ concept with a rooftop party at its new offices in Norway. BioMar pioneered the introduction of extruded fish feed in the 1960s, which enabled a significant reduction of the negative impact on the local water environment.
The company created ECOLINE: the first fish feed in the world to be declared environmentally friendly and had won the Danish Environmental Award in 1988.
The BioSustain concept is the foundation for BioMar's extensive work and covers sustainability across all three dimensions - economy, environment and society.
BioSustain is a dynamic platform that continues to adapt to the fluid environment of stakeholder demands in the aquaculture industry. It was developed in collaboration with BASF and in parallel with DNV's ProSustain programme.
The project was born out of the need to reduce the dependence on marine-based fishmeal and fish oil, and the original concept focused on fish feed solutions for salmon.
"It has long since been possible to replace fishmeal with other protein sources but we didn't stop there. We continue to push innovation and today, we can produce fish feeds with zero inclusion of marine ingredients, where the fish oil is replaced with microalgae, omega-3 in their native form," Diaz explained.
The next evolution in the BioSustain programme is the creation of a fully integrated tool for tracking and measuring sustainability at the sourcing aspect of the value chain.
- BioMar
