"We expect it to be as good as our regular feed and hope that the commercial test will show the same good results as Skretting has seen in its efforts to improve feed intake," said Eirik Welde, freshwater director in Nordlaks.
"Insects are an important food for the wild salmon, and we see that insect meal can increase the appetite in the fish,” said Siri Tømmerås, who is responsible for feed for land-based farming in Skretting Norway. “This is an interesting find, and we continue to take advantage of this.”
Skretting believes insect meal will be an important raw material in the future and is helping producers scale up production. Skretting says that they have the knowledge to do this and have chosen to do so due to the belief that insect meal will be a significant protein source for aquaculture feeds moving forward.
"The challenge has been to find manufacturers that can produce enough volume with consistent, good quality,” stated Tømmerås. “We have seen more than thirty manufacturers, and ended up with a handful of suppliers that we have moved on. After a close cooperation for a long time, we have now obtained the raw material at a quality level that we can count on in the future.”
In the European market, there is now little available insect meal for use on a large scale, and Skretting is working with manufacturers who wish to come up at a commercial level. The company envisions that by 2022 there will be at least five different European suppliers, each producing 20,000 tonnes of insect meal per year. That amount equates to two thirds of the amount of soybean concentrate Skretting Norway uses today.
"Our goal is that in the future, ingredients used for aquaculture feed do not compete with food for human consumption. For us it\'s important to invest in alternatives like insect meal," said Mads Martinsen, Skretting Norway's Product Development Director, who has several new commodity projects in progress.
"Insect meal seems to taste good for the salmon, which in nature is used to insects. We are also currently testing the plankton Calanus, which is a natural part of the wild salmon diet. When we explore further down the food chain, in fact, the Nordic waters have as much Calanus as the total biomass of all wild fish and sea mammals combined. The authorities have opened for regulated fishing, and Skretting is already commencing commercial trials with Calanus. Initial results show that salmon also like the taste of this plankton, so here we have a fantastic new resource in addition to insect meal," concluded Martinsen.
