Food waste

Challenges

A total 7% of global emissions are caused by food waste, and 38% of total energy consumption within global food production can be attributed to food lost from the value chain or thrown away. Every kilogram of food thrown away creates greenhouse gas emissions of 2 kg CO₂ and almost 33% of all food produced worldwide is discarded.

Food waste is one of our greatest challenges in modern times, not just because of our carbon footprint, but also because food is lost that could be used to feed the global population, also resulting in loss of value creation. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals include a goal to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030.

Our ambitions in this area

100 kg fish = 100 kg product for consumers

How we take action / What action has been taken

Through our 50/50 project we have implemented sub-target to reduce current food waste and food loss by 50% from 2019 to 2024.

All the Group companies will be working together to achieve this goal.

The Farming segment has introduced targeted measures to reduce food loss by minimising fish mortality. This involves the release to sea of larger smolt, a high Omega 3 content in our feed to make our fish more robust, and investments in boats with slaughtering facilities so that fish can be slaughtered directly at the edge of the cage.

The Wild Catch segment aims to reduce food loss by preserving residual raw materials, producing meal, oil and ensilage that can be returned to Lerøy's value chain. This process involves optimising production of meal, oil and ensilage on board the Group's trawlers, and investing in new buildings such as Kongsfjord, a boat commissioned in 2019.

The VAP Sales & Distribution segment is taking action to reduce food waste by reducing the number of fish that fall on the floor, using the entire fish with their new concept, “we use it all”, reducing the number of unsold products and non-utilised input factors in production, and optimising the shelf life of our products.

How we measure our impact

All companies in the group report their results every quarter through the reporting tool Teams SR. The impact is visualized both at group and company level through reports in PowerBI and evaluated quarterly. If the performance trend deviates from the target (0 or negative), the cause must be identified and specific measures implemented, the effect of the measures evaluated and possibly adjusted towards the next quarterly measurement.

Results:

• Participation in the following projects: Charting food waste in the seafood industry, managed by Sintef
• Pilot test of new sustainable method for extraction of protein (pH Shift) from residual raw materials so we can make use of the whole fish
• Investment in factory for exploitation of residual raw materials from own factories to produce different types of processed fish (fish cakes, fish pudding)
• 24% increase in shelf life of consumer packages by making use of new Co₂ emitters in consumer packages. A longer shelf life provides improved predictability and less waste.
• Further development of the “we use it all” project by offering customers different products made from residual raw materials
• Exploiting residual raw materials from the Wild Catch segment in feed for the Farming segment. This may involve increasing the content of marine raw materials in the feed, which in turn makes the salmon more robust and increases survival rates, or further reductions in the amount of wild caught fish from commercial fisheries in our feed.
• Initiation of a new packaging method for whole salmon and fillets. This involves using new technology allowing for transport of fresh fish by boat over longer distances, where the shelf life starts when the package is opened. This allows for more control over time and shelf life of raw materials used in production

 Targets per KPI and Results per KPI

Target: Reduce current food waste by 50% from 2019 to 2024,  increase share for human consumption

Regarding result on survival in sea more information available here.

On wildcatch - production of meal, oil and ensilage volume have increased from 2 669  tonnes in 2019 to 5 439 tonnes in 2021.The increase is mainly cause of the new vessel Kongsfjord producing silage and optimalization of oil and meal production on other vessels. Volumes in 2022 will not have such significant increase, increase will mainly be in optimizing meal, oil & silage production.  

It has been challenging finding a good reporting solution for Industry/VAP facilities in reporting floor fish and unsold product total for the Group. We therefor do not have sufficient data from 2019 to compare with. Level of floor fish and unsold products was in 2020 around 176 868 kg  and in 2021 ;167 383 kg total in the group (-5%). All facilities are working according the action plan to reduce floor fish and unsold products.

* The data base 2019 is deficient or not complete. Base years must therefore be evaluated from the year 2020.