October 25, 2024

Akaroa King Salmon achieves world first with BioMar's Blue Impact feed programme

Akaroa King Salmon has become the first King Salmon producer in the world to adopt BioMar's Blue Impact feed programme.

This initiative supplements wild-caught fish in their formulations with cultivated algal oil, fish trimmings, and insect meal. The new approach significantly reduces the impact on wild fish stocks while utilising clean, sustainable sources of Omega-3 to produce the healthiest fish possible, BioMar said.

As an early adopter of this technology, Akaroa Salmon trialled the algal oil, achieving positive results with their salmon that led to them winning the Seafood NZ "Future Adaptation" award in 2023. Building on this success, the company's partnership with BioMar now includes using novel ingredients like insect meal and fish trimmings sourced from pelagic fish in their feed.

Blue Impact will see Akaroa King Salmon become a net[1]positive fish producer, committed to lowering its carbon footprint while incorporating regenerative and circular feed ingredients.

Duncan Bates, founder and managing partner of Akaroa King Salmon, said: "When I first started farming salmon in Akaroa Harbour (New Zealand), almost four decades ago, the feed ingredients essentially relied on wild caught fish as the raw material, and we fed up to 3kg of wild fish to grow 1kg of farmed salmon. Clearly, this wasn't a sustainable practice.

"With the introduction of Blue Impact, Akaroa King Salmon have started our journey to become a positive fish protein producer, a far cry from those days long ago and a testament to our ongoing aspiration to become a truly sustainable food producer. I am particularly excited to use novel ingredients like insect meal, utilising waste streams previously going to landfill."

Nik Mavromatis, marketing and sales manager of Akaroa Salmon, explained: "Our customers have high expectations – they want us to continue raising the finest tasting King Salmon while also being mindful of the broader environmental impact, without compromising on the health benefits. I'm thrilled about the future of aquaculture as we blend our farming expertise with the technical expertise of BioMar around innovative, new ingredients like oil from microalgae."

Blue Impact feeds are designed as an individualised journey that requires continuous improvements across all three BioSustain™ impact parameters: forage fish dependency ratio (FFDR), percentage of circular and restorative raw materials, and carbon footprint. This concept requires utilising innovative novel ingredients such as insect meal, regenerative agricultural products, and trimmings from seafood processing in ascending levels of inclusion in each successive version of the feed.

- BioMar