Is farmed seafood sustainable?

Sustainable production of aquaculture products is about taking informed choices. The Eco-Efficiency Analysis has become an invaluable tool for BioMar and other players in the aquaculture value chain caring about the sustainability level of their products.


BioMar has always been focusing on caring about the environment. We have applied methods and tools to assist in the making of a more sustainable future for our customers, for instance by providing a pioneering instrument to promote sustainable development in our industry and value chain.

As a part of our BioSustain programme, BioMar has, in collaboration with BASF, developed the Eco-Efficiency Manager as one of the tools and methods for measuring and optimising product sustainability. The aim of this model is to compare a full range of environmental and social impacts assignable to products and services, in order to be able to choose the least burdensome one.

With the Eco-Efficiency Manager, we examine the entire lifecycle of a product or a process. The model also uncovers improvement potentials in relation to environmental impacts and production related costs.

The Eco-Efficiency Manager is probably the most comprehensive tool for evaluation of product sustainability available today. It gathers and builds on well-known methodology for environmental analysis such as Life Cycle Assessment and includes Carbon Footprinting.

In BioMar we are actively implementing the Eco-Efficiency Analysis in recipe optimisation. Integration of the total environment impact in our feed formulation programmes enables our product developers to create feed solutions that are not only optimised according to feed performance and costs, but also according to environmental impact.

The active utilisation of the Eco-Efficiency Analysis makes it possible to identify how changes to e.g. feed recipes or other processes can improve sustainability. This can be compared to possible effects on costs and product performance.

We have developed the tool to include the whole aquaculture value chain, and it pleases us to see that the number of customers and business partners utilising the tool is constantly increasing.