Wednesday, June 15, 13,15 p.m CEST
20 years of AquaVision
Organized by Nutreco-owned Skretting, AquaVision 2016 came to an end with a final speech by Steven Rafferty, managing director at Skretting.
An opportunity to stimulate networking and encourage further collaboration, a total of 17 speakers including Marine Harvest CEO Alf -Helge Aarskog, Nutreco CEO Knut Nesse, Cermaq's Chair of the Board Yu Sato talked to more than 300 delegates about the possibilities of the industry.
Among the most recurrent topics were the use of antibiotics in Chile and the need of the industry to come up with a viable solution as a whole; cross-collaboration; sea lice regulatory and scientific challenges; global warmth and population growth.
Moderator Pellegrino Riccardi, keynote speaker Lord Sebastien Coe, Taming Tigers CEO Jim Lawless and Professor Jamie Anderson talked about success, creativity, effective decision-making and the need to communicate in order to build a sustainable and viable industry.
The next AquaVision will be held once again in Stavanger, from June 18 to June 20, in 2018.
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Wednesday, June 15, 12,52 p.m CEST
Cermaq and Mitsubishi: the perfect fit
Mitsubishi Corporation has been involved in tuna farming in Japan and shrimp farming in Florida.
There are eight business groups within the corporation and it has 200 offices in 80 countries in the world, so, why enter salmon farming?
Mitsubishi acquired salmon giant Cermaq -- with operations in Norway, Chile and Canada -- for two reasons, Yu Sato, Chair of the Board of Cermaq’s group told delegates at AquaVision.
The salmon farming idea fits well with Mitsubishi’s strategy and corporate principles: responsibility to society, integrity and fairness, and global understanding through business.
Although there are many challenges in the industry, Sato is confident the move into this sector was the right one.
The second reason, he said, is the ambition to see a sustainable growth of salmon farming.
Mitsubishi’s strategy is to create demand, to use its value chain in the seafood industry, as well as horizontal and vertical networking to supply a healthy and stable international market, at stable prices.
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Wednesday, June 15, 12,00 p.m CEST
We are what we eat
Nutrition-related diseases are on the rise, Manfred Eggersdorfer, senior vice president for Nutrition Science and Advocacy at DSM, said this afternoon.
So it should be clear the solution must come from our eating habits.
Finland, for example, was the worst country in the world in terms of cardiovascular disease risk, he said, and it only needed to change food recommendations and reduce salt in diets to become one of the world's countries with the lowest rate of CVD.
The effects of diseases for which medicine hasn't found a cure such as Alzheimer’s, can be significantly reduced with a fatty acid, and B vitamin-based diet.
As we age, our brain starts to shrink slowly, about 0.5 percent a year in people with no diagnosed impairment, 1 percent a year in people with mild cognitive impairment, and 3 percent a year in patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
"There is a nutritional solution: a combination of high B vitamins with omega3 fatty acids that can reduce brain shrinking by as much as 40 percent."
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Wednesday, June 15, 10,30 a.m CEST
Submerged fish cages
Atlantis Subsea Farming's submerged fish farms keep the salmon deep in the water column over 90 percent of the time, while allowing them to access the surface via an enclosed tube, to the point that it becomes a minor problem.
This might be a solution, and if if successful, it would increase value operations, said Trude Olafsen, manager of innovation projects at AKVA group.
Atlantis is on track to open a few areas for farming in Norway, and other parts of the world for growing both trout and salmon with the right collaboration between the industry and the governments., Olafsen said.
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Wednesday, June 15, 09,55 a.m CEST
We've been doing it wrong
Non-medical or medical solutions? Many companies are talking about not using pharmaceutical products to treat sea lice -- restrictive regulations play a part in this decision -- but this option is not advised by many experts.
Bernt Matinsen, Pharmaq’s director of sales in Europe, Middle East, North America and Chile, said this morning the failure in fighting sea lice until now came from exhausting the resources, from a lack of rotation.
"We use a product and wait for parasites to create resistance, instead we should be rotating all the elements in the tool box: biological tools, reduction of exposure, vaccines, functional feed and removal of lice.”
Non medical and medical solutions should be equally relied on to treat sea lice, drugs will not be the ultimate and only solution to this problem, despite the encouraging progress being made in labs.
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Wednesday, June 15, 09,30 a.m CEST
Time to be creative
It’s hard, 90 percent of the population have lost their creativity before they’re even allowed to drive, and 98 percent of us no longer think outside the box by the age of 35, and yet we're asked to come up with creative ideas.
Jamie Anderson, professor of Strategic Management at the Antwerp Management School, told delegates this morning of the importance of remaining creative in our adult lives citing Spanish painter Picasso:
“The problem is not to become an adult, but to remain an artist once we grow up.”
We know the theory; it’s not rocket science, so how don’t we apply it? Great inventors come up with their best ideas when pressure is gone, be it doing sports, relaxing on the sauna and well, any situation where our worries step aside.
So go and try it, whenever you're under pressure, do whatever it is that calms you down, and without noticing your ideas will flow, and you'll be able to change the course of your business.
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Tuesday, June 15,53 p.m CEST
No need for consolidation in Peru
There hasn’t been much consolidation in the fishmeal and fish oil industry, and it won’t necessarily happen at all, Steven Rafferty, Skretting managing director told IntraFish at the AquaVision conference held in Stavanger.
What is clear is that fishmeal and fish oil producers are now more proactive in working together, and are taking a more holistic approach in the supply chain, Rafferty said.
While Peru’s fishmeal and fish oil production sector has had good regulation in general for many years, it needs to be encouraged to work toward certification.
“I don’t think the industry needs consolidation, as long as there is collaboration, and an organization of fishmeal and fish oil producers -- which there is -- and a common goal.”
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Tuesday, June 14, 15,30 p.m CEST
Educated advice
In sports he won four Olympic medals, including the 1,500 metres gold medal at the Olympic Games in 1980 and 1984; in politics he was elected Member of Parliament in 1992 and he spent 5 years understanding more about the fishing industry; in 2015 he assumed office as chairman of the International Association of Athletics Federations.
Lord Sebastien Coe, keynote speaker at this year’s AquaVision conference, has experienced success a few times in his life.
To him, the aquaculture industry should be increasing awareness among young people if it is to succeed in its goal.
“The message needs to be clear, explain what you’re doing and why; explain what you can achieve; pose a challenge and place yourself as the solution,” he advised delegates.
Feeding the world is a big deal, and young people understand that. They sit on the moral hotspot now more than ever, they are asking themselves how organizations operate to reflect the world they live in, and they work in collaborative networks, “if you’re not creating for the young, they will move on.”
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Tuesday, June 14, 12:30 p.m CEST
It’s not about ending the use of fishmeal
Fishmeal is a rich source of protein, but it is a limited resource, and to rely solely on it would restrain aquaculture's development.
Alex Obach, managing director of Skretting's research arm ARC, is proud of the center’s latest developments in fishmeal replacement.
"We are no longer dependant on fishmeal, we know how to formulate fish feed that is optimum for salmon growth, and has no negative impact on salmon growth," Obach said.
R&D is driving the industry towards a much more flexible position. “Although the goal is not to end the use of fishmeal, we can now say that fishmeal will no longer be a limiting factor for the growth of the salmon industry, this is good news for all of us.”
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Tuesday, June 14, 11:30 a.m CEST
Fighting hunger and obesity
There are around one billion obese people in the world, said Marine Harvest CEO Alf-Helge Aarskog this morning. “Fat to the point where it’s a medical issue."
"There are more obese people than starving people in the world, because we eat the wrong stuff."
The industry’s mission is to produce 47.5 million additional metric tons of aquatic food by 2050, and Marine Harvest’s particular goal is to change people’s minds around when it comes to thinking what to eat, he explained.
Given the characteristics of the product, it should be a fairly easy task.
In America, 78.9 percent of the population say they like to eat salmon and only 25 years ago, salmon could not be used for salmon sushi due to a lack of product that could be safely eaten raw. Now farmed Atlantic salmon has changed all that and sushi has become a product that has boosted salmon sales everywhere.
To lead the Blue Revolution, said Aarskog, companies need to focus on taste, convenience, health, and branding.
Marine Harvest sells six million meals of fish every day to 80 different countries, but aquaculture annual consumption is only 10 kilograms per capita. It’s the industry’s responsibility to increase farmed fish consumption among consumers, he said.
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Tuesday, June 14, 09:30 a.m CEST
What drives costs up?
The beautiful thing about innovation is it shifts your supply curve, and it allows you to produce more with reduced production costs, Ragnar Tveteraas, professor at the University of Stavanger, told delegates this morning.
However, aquaculture is a complicated sector: the different species require specific attention and yet the industry as a whole faces common challenges which are costly to deal with individually, and which require competence and specialized human resources.
So, how to deal with global issues and high production costs? It’s fair to think costs depend on prices, but the sector is hugely influenced by externalities, as Ragnar Tveteraas, professor at the University of Stavanger, reminded delegates at AquaVision.
These externalities include -- take a deep breath in -- international institutions, owner types, species, market and buyer requirements, other stakeholders influencing the ability to produce efficiency and grow, environmental and other external factors, competence of capital owners, management and workers, R&D investments in general -- breeding, feed and ingredients and disease in particular -- and government regulations.
For fish farmers to grow and prosper, collective industry organization and action is the most efficient approach.
There is not one single recipe for improving aquaculture production costs, although global aquaculture has made impressive productivity gains over time.
Species such as tilapia, salmon, and shrimp have had an impressive improvement compared with meat, but there are still great opportunities for increasing productivity.
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Tuesday, June 14, 09:05 a.m CEST
Local fish farming in Africa
Nutreco is currently running a pilot project with NGO Oxfam to support small-scale catfish farmers in Ibadan, Nigeria.
The company's goal is to provide technical assessment.
Aquaculture is the most efficient livestock production, and the flexible use of feed ingredients enables the industry to become a net fish protein producer, in addition, its carbon footprint is relatively low.
Helping small communities is part of the solution to feed the growing population from sustainable sources.
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Tuesday, June 14, 08:45 a.m CEST
AMR: When drugs no longer work
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of bacteria and other microorganisms to resist antibiotics, in other words: when drugs no longer work. But what is the real impact of this? According to Knut Nesse, CEO of Nutreco, this is a growing problem, and its consequences can be fatal.
“Annual deaths attributable to AMR in 2015 amounted to 700,000; in 2050 that figure could reach 10 million. It will kill more people than cancer,” Nesse said.
There is now consensus on the main roots of the problem, it mainly comes from two sources: irresponsible use and prescriptions of drugs, and antibiotic residues in animals consumed by human beings.
However, when you are part of this industry you can take the climate change approach, or you can accept that you are part of the issue, and that you should also be part of the solution, whether you like it or not.
“The use of antibiotic in fish farming is a growing part of the negative perspective of aquaculture,” Nesse said, and the industry needs to work together to eliminate it.
This issue will not go away, it will stay as main topic in the industry, and it is increasingly attracting media attention, said Nesse.
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Tuesday, June 14, 08:30 a.m CEST
New owner, new plans?
What will Nutreco focus on from now? After being acquired by family-owned company SHV -- founded in 1986 -- Nutreco will continue to focus on innovation, nutrition solutions, sustainability, suppliers, environment, and consumers.
“We will continue with our commitment to feed the world responsibly,” said Knut Nesse, CEO of Nutreco.
In 2015, Nutreco’s revenue reached €5.7 billion, the company employed 11,000 people worldwide and it has 11 R&D units in 7 different countries.
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Tuesday, June 14, 08:15 a.m CEST
Welcome to Stavanger
What is AquaVision’s inspiration? As in any industry conference, the key is networking. “The input from speakers, together with discussion between experts will provide the necessary knowledge and opportunities to all delegates. There is a wealth of experience and wisdom is this room, stimulate networking, and make the most of this meeting,” said Nutreco CEO Knut Nesse.
Welcome to sunny Stavanger!
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