2020 is a year that is about making former investments succeed, said our CEO Matts Johansen during his interview with IntraFish. He further recalls all the investments that took shape in the past year, which will impact the business positively in 2020.
Read the original interview with Intrafish here.
What were the three most significant developments for your business in 2019?
1. Several governments came together to prepare a systematic measurement of how much krill there is. The result came out this autumn with an even bigger biomass compared to the last time such a survey was made in 2000. Having that was a very important testament to everything we have been doing and saying about the krill fishery being sustainable. It is now proven with data too that the biomass stock is just as healthy or even healthier than what it was before.
2. Another achievement has been the collaboration with Greenpeace to create Marine Protected Areas. Every krill fishing company in the Antarctic jumped on board, which also demonstrates that the industry is supporting the development of marine protected areas in the oceans. When you have industry players, non-governmental organizations, the government and scientists working together, you can actually achieve great results very quick.
3. We launched our new fishing vessel and it started fishing for the first time in April 2019. Everything was build with the intent of reducing the carbon dioxide footprint as much as possible. This vessel reduces CO2 footprint by 30 to 40 percent and costed around 40 million.
What major changes and developments do you expect your business to undergo in 2020?
Looking in 2020, we have some really good data that would be of impact on our business. The data is related to shrimp growth and documents how krill could enhance the growth of shrimp. On the back of this new data together with the vessel coming out with more capacity, we are now able to provide more krill to new customers and more markets. We expect a 25 to 30 percent increase in capacity. The strong science coming out will help our products reach new borders in markets like Asia, South America and our existing core markets as well.
Looking forward, what will be the the most important developments that could impact the industry in 2020?
We just finalized a big project with key industry players where we listened to the focus areas of farmers. One of them is sustainability on both the ecosystem side and the climate side, which fits very well with Aker BioMarine's position from day one.
The second focus area is fish welfare, as in caring about the wellbeing of the fish. That is not only an economic factor but also a branding corporate focus to make sure they take as good care as possible of the fish.
