Grupo Almar and DSM-Firmenich, the global leader in health, nutrition and beauty, announced a few days ago a multi-year commitment to measure and improve the environmental footprint of the world leader in shrimp production. The pact is to use Sustell, DSM-Firmenich’s smart sustainability service, throughout its shrimp production, as well as to access that company’s sustainability expertise and knowledge.
“Through our partnership with a global heavyweight in animal nutrition and health such as DSM-Firmenich, we have our sights firmly set on improving the sustainability of our industry. We chose Sustell to go beyond measurement by taking charge of our entire environmental footprint, managing our footprint 24/7 within our own teams and organization,” said Wolfgang Harten, COO of Almar Group, one of the world’s top five shrimp producers.
“Almar is making significant and incremental progress to improve the sustainability of its shrimp production, learning from others and investing in technology, with tangible improvements already made. We are committed to making further progress, both in technology and sustainability,” the executive added.
The full environmental footprint of Almar Group’s shrimp production will begin to be measured in January 2024 and will provide internationally validated footprint results for that entire year and thereafter.
The path to sustainability
The Almar Group reportedly wanted to formalize its sustainability journey by choosing DSM-Firmenich and Sustell, who will accurately measure and validate its carbon footprint as part of a full life cycle assessment (LCA) based on the environmental footprint in accordance with ISO 14040/44. The company looked at a range of options and was inspired by the salmon industry, which has made significant progress in measuring and improving its environmental footprint thanks to tools such as Sustell.
In that regard, David Nickell, vice president of Sustainability and Business Solutions, Nutrition and Animal Health at DSM-Firmenich highlighted that “Grupo Almar is a pioneer in the shrimp industry and with Sustell will possess both a complete and accurate environmental footprint and the scenario testing capabilities to map and make tangible improvements in sustainability.”
“As seen with Sustell users around the world and across multiple industries, this then opens the door to greater production efficiency and farm profitability, while unlocking new value opportunities, such as product eco-labeling, and access to sustainable financing.”
For her part, Pamela Nath, director of the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership (SSP), commented: “We welcome this announcement and the concrete efforts it represents, which demonstrates that Ecuadorian shrimp production is committed to shrimp production with sustainable practices. We hope that this will continue to inspire and motivate the industry to go even further in improving the sustainability of shrimp production.”
Advancing the value chain as well
This collaboration between Almar Group and DSM-Firmenich will not only support the reduction of Almar Group’s own environmental footprint, but by validating the shrimp module for Sustell, it will enable the overall shrimp production value chain to improve its sustainability.
In line with the company’s vision to “become world leaders in sustainable aquaculture based on high standards of quality and efficiency,” Almar Group produces approximately 10% of Ecuador’s exports, by weight, with only 2% of arable land.
Continuous updating
As reported from Almar and DSM-Firmenich, Sustell is an advanced platform and additional consulting service, as needed, that uses farm-level data to simplify the complexity of measuring, validating and improving the environmental sustainability of animal protein – transparently, scientifically, farm by farm, production system by production system.
Sustell accurately measures your entire environmental footprint and provides actionable information on how to reduce your impact. The tool, which has been in development for several years and is continuously updated, has been developed in collaboration with key partners such as Blonk, recognized experts in the field of agri-food life cycle analysis, as well as customers and users around the world to reflect the real needs of sustainable animal protein production.
