Startups that are shaking up the seafood sector
With investors and entrepreneurs waking up to the true potential of the blue economy, there has never been a greater number of promising startups emerging in the seafood sector. While the majority of these are focused on the aquaculture industry, due to projections for its continued rapid growth rate, they also include capture fisheries and alternative seafoods.
Insects as novel aquafeed ingredients
One of the main criticisms of those aquaculture sectors – such as salmon and shrimp – which require the provision of supplementary feeds, is their continued reliance on wild-caught fish to provide essential nutrients. However, a range of alternative ingredients are currently being developed – as shown by the growing number of insect farms, for example. Insects are a natural part of the diets of many fish species, so feeding these insect proteins is a palatable alternative to fishmeal, which could also help to reduce the aquafeed sector’s reliance on wild-caught fish.
Innovafeed, which is headquartered in France, is one of the world’s leading insect-for-aquafeed producers, attracting investments worth €450 million to date. While its production levels are still relatively small, salmon and trout fed diets containing back soldier fly larvae from its farm have been available in outlets such as the French supermarket chain Auchan for several years and consumers are even willing to pay a green premium for them.
Developing precision fishing technology
Efforts to design fishing gear that’s more selective – i.e. limits bycatch and has a reduced impact on the seabed – have been going on for several decades, but it’s important to achieve this without drastically reducing the equipment’s ability to catch the target species. One startup that’s showing promise in this field is SafetyNet Technologies, which is developing a range of special lights that can be deployed with different styles of fishing gear to manipulate fish behaviour in a way that reduces bycatch.
Although it’s still early days for SafetyNet Technologies’ devices, extensive trials are underway in a variety of fisheries, in which underwater cameras are assessing how using different colours and locations of lights can help attract different fish species to – or divert them from – a range of pots, nets and dredges.
Cell-cultured seafood
A wide selection of alternative seafoods is currently under development and these broadly fall into two key categories – plant-based foods, that attempt to mimic the taste and texture of genuine seafoods, and the propagation of small samples of cells from popular seafood species in bioreactors to create’cell-cultured’ seafoods.
The former are already fairly widely available, but can fall short of many seafood consumers’ preferences regarding taste, texture and nutritional composition. Meanwhile, the latter are – in the long run – seen as having greater potential for uptake by stalwart seafood consumers, should the startups be able to produce them at a commercial scale and an affordable price. Potential advantages include the ability to scale up production starting with only a handful of cells from a living fish, and the possibility of growing only those cuts of an animal that are favoured by consumers – no energy is wasted producing bones or internal organs, for example.
Two of the most promising producers of cellular seafood are Blue Nalu and Bluu Seafood – both of which have been able to produce small quantities of high-end seafood samples in their labs. While the former is focusing on developing bluefin tuna, the latter is working with the lab-based production of salmon, trout and carp.
In a bid to bring down the costs of cell-cultured seafood, Singapore-based Umami Meats is producing cell-cultured grouper cells which can be diluted with a plant-based bio-ink produced by Israel’s Steakholder Foods and run through 3D printers to produce ready-to-cook fillets, which are due to be launched to market in 2024.
Seaweed startups
While several species of seaweeds are popular food ingredients across large swathes of Asia, most Western consumers have yet to embrace them, other than the nori in their sushi rolls. However, there’s a growing awareness of both the health benefits of eating seaweed and the environmental benefits of farming them – factors which have helped to inspire a growing number of startups in this field. These occur right across the seaweed value chain: from the producers themselves to companies establishing biorefineries to create a range of products from seaweeds – from fabrics to pharmaceuticals.
One startup that aims to have a big impact on the seafood side of the sector is Atlantic Sea Farms. Based in Maine, in the USA, it has a unique business model, in which the company provides free kelp seed for lobster fishermen to grow in marine sites during the period the local lobster fishery is closed. The startup then guarantees to purchase all the kelp each fisherman harvests – providing valuable extra income for the fishermen and helping to inspire the steady growth of the US seaweed sector.
Conclusion
It’s clear that there’s no shortage of variety when it comes to the range of emerging startups within the seafood sector. Picking which ones are likely to scale up and turn into a profit is no mean feat, but – regardless of which ones prove successful in the long-term – it’s a fascinating field to study for potential investors, industry commentators and consumers, who like variety in their seafood options and provenance.
