Akaroa King Salmon has become the first king salmon producer globally to adopt the innovative Blue Impact feed program developed by BioMar. 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 utilizing clean, sustainable sources of omega-3 to produce the healthiest fish possible.
As an early adopter of this technology, Akaroa Salmon trialed the algal oil, achieving outstanding results with their salmon that led to them winning the Seafood NZ "Future Adaptation" award in 2023. Building on this success, their partnership with BioMar now includes using novel ingredients like insect meal and fish trimmings sourced from pelagic fish in their feed. This initiative will see Akaroa King Salmon become a net-positive fish producer, committed to lowering its carbon footprint while incorporating regenerative and circular feed ingredients.
Akaroa King Salmon is a proudly 100% New Zealand-owned partnership that includes Ngāti Porou, Ōnuku Runanga - the mana moana (or guardians) of Akaroa Harbour - and the founding Bates Family. This partnership has a whakawhanaungatanga (relationship) based around intergenerational sustainability, aiming to provide local employment and healthy seafood for today and future generations.
Duncan Bates, founder and managing partner of Akaroa King Salmon, reflected that “when I first started farming salmon in Akaroa Harbour, 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 has 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, utilizing waste streams previously going to landfill,” Bates said.
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 individualized journey that requires continuous improvements across all three BioSustain™ impact parameters: Forage Fish Dependency Ratio (FFDR), a percentage of circular and restorative raw materials, and carbon footprint. This concept requires utilizing 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.
Mike Thomson, commercial director, BioMar Australia said he was not surprised that Akaroa has started their Blue Impact journey. “Companies like Akaroa who are dedicated to sustainability and utilizing more circular and restorative ingredients are necessary for future-proofing the aquaculture industry. Using sustainable novel ingredients is essential for decoupling feed and food supply chains and provides novel ingredient producers the confidence to invest in R&D, upscaling, and commercialization, increasing the availability of these ingredients industry-wide”.
“We are excited to partner with Akaroa on their sustainability journey. Both companies are very ambitious in this area, and I expect we will constantly be pushing one another to achieve important sustainability targets and milestones. This kind of partnership leads to innovative solutions and meaningful sustainability advancements for seafood,” Mike continued.
