With 60 registered participants, we hosted this year`s first annual meeting yesterday. It was obvious that our five new focus areas have affected the clusters work so far this year. Especially digitalization, circular economy and talent attraction have been included in many of our programs, projects and services. A bunch of our projects was presented, and here are some of the highlights.

Land meet Ocean – a crossover project

Project Developer, Elise Sæle Dale, presented an exciting project within two of our focus areas – climate, environment and circular economy, and novel feed ingredients. The project is called Land meet Ocean and it is a cross-sector collaboration project, focusing on accelerating circular and sustainable bioeconomy. She also introduced one of their active projects called BlueMusselFeed, which is a project aiming to make Nordic poultry feed from ocean cleaning blue mussels.

– Blue mussel can replace imported soy, corn-gluten and fish protein, said Elise Sæle Dale in her presentation.

She added that they aim to feed chicken with Norwegian shells. It is a project with much potensial, because it can decrease the amount of imported protein.

Circular Economy Program

Marianne Wethe Koch (t.l) and Solveig Holm.

Another program within one of the same areas, is the Circular Economy Program. Project Manager Solveig Holm presented it, and interviewed one of the participants in the program, Marianne Wethe Koch, Sustainability Manager in Cargill Aqua Nutrition. The program has already finished two of the four gatherings, consisting of company visits, presentations and so on. The goal is to provide knowledge about circular economy and circular business models to people in the seafood industry.

– We have 25 participants from 12 different seafood companies and Land meet Ocean partners, Solveig Holm mentioned in her presentation.

Circular Economy Program was initiated based on input from our partners and members, because of a need for more competence on the matter.

AquaCloud

In addition to a need for knowledge about circular economy, is the need for digitalization and digital transformation in the seafood industry. AquaCloud an important project within the focus area, and it is a data platform aiming to be a catalysator for digitalization in the industry. The project was presented by their Workflow Manager Björgólfur Hávarðsson, who also is Innovation Manager here at NCE Seafood Innovation. Currently, AquaCloud, is working with standardization for improving data quality and with the data platform to collect and share data across the industry.

A lot of potential

The three projects, Land meet Ocean, the Circular Economy Program and AquaCloud, are exciting projects with a lot of potential. To sum up, we have a lot of projects, services and programs we are proud of, and we are thankful for all our members and partners for cooperating with us. We are proud to be working together for sustainability and innovation in the seafood industry.