BioMar Reaches 1M Tons of Salmon Feed with Microalgae

This month BioMar — one of the leading feed suppliers in the aquaculture industry — hit a milestone with the adoption of one million tons of microalgae omega-3s into feed diets.

“With limited planetary resources, the need to decouple aquaculture feed supply chains from directly competing with food for human consumption will increase. By including microalgae in aquaculture feed diets, we can bypass the wild fish stocks and go straight to the original source of essential omega-3s,” said Vidar Gundersen, Global Sustainability Director of the BioMar Group. “This helps to relieve pressure on our oceans while ensuring that the fish are getting the optimal nutrition required.”

BioMar’s process began in 2013 with their first microalgae product, AlgaPrime, developed to reduce dependency on marine fisheries and enhance the nutritional value of seafood.

AlgaPrime DHA is a native, whole algae ingredient that contains approximately three times the level of DHA of fish oil. “To bring something this novel to market required the support from the entire value chain. We found this among several salmon farmers and retailers that were willing to take a chance on microalgae,” said Paddy Campbell, VP of the Salmon Division of BioMar. “Also, thanks to the numerous people in BioMar production sites that found solutions to some challenging technical issues that we experienced over the years.”

BioMar recently announced a target of 50% circular and/or restorative ingredients in their aquaculture feed diets by 2030. They define restorative ingredients as raw materials that significantly shift the balance between ecosystem impacts and human production systems towards net-positive environmental outcomes. An example of a restorative ingredient includes single cell protein produced from fermented forestry by-products.