Teamwork is required to make Scotland’s seafood sector more profitable, study says

The study, Building a sustainable and higher-value seafood sector: Insights from a stakeholder dialogue in the Scottish value chain, was conducted as part of the EU-funded project LOWINFOOD – Multi-actor design of low-waste food value chains through the demonstration of innovative solutions to reduce food loss and waste. It sought to understand and identify waste in the industry by engaging with a number of stakeholder groups, including fishers, processors, retailers, innovators and policymakers.

They found that improved coordination among stakeholders could further improve resource-use efficiency and economic returns in the seafood industry.

The paper recommends that Scotland adopts a cluster model, such as the one currently used in Iceland. This model brings fishers, processors, innovators and researchers together in a neutral space, allowing them to pool resources, share byproducts and attract innovators. In Iceland, the model has helped the industry use more of every cod caught, and created new industries around collagen, enzymes, medical materials and more.

According to the study, Scotland generates tens of thousands of tonnes of fish byproducts each year – the heads, skins, guts and trimmings of fish which go uneaten. These byproducts are almost always turned into low-value fishmeal or fish oil, however, with better coordination, they could be turned higher-value products such as collagen, nutraceuticals, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and specialised ingredients.

This opportunity is not fully released because markets for these byproducts have yet to be established, and additional investments required for logistics, sorting and storage are not justifiable for smaller enterprises.

Additionally, when labour is limited, processing facilities tend to prioritise filleting larger, premium fish, while diverting smaller fish to lower-value uses, such as fishmeal and fish oil production. 

The report concludes: “Before simulating any demand from higher-value industries or initiating large investments, the lack of Scotland-specific statistics around the volume and biochemical characteristics of available byproduct material flows must be addressed. Any future valorisation strategy must also consider how to incorporate small, geographically dispersed volumes into the process, and the role of unsegregated valorisation routes, possibly investigating how to combine multiple processes to extract different chemical compounds from the same biomaterials.”

The researchers also advise: “A place-based approach to valorisation would reduce distances between the processors which generate the byproducts, and their potential users. Such approaches would also fit well with the geographical distribution of industry stakeholders and the characteristics of primary production in Scotland, where sea fisheries dominate on the North East, and aquaculture, especially Atlantic salmon, leads on the West Coast.”