Collaboration accelerates plans to commercialise cellular aquaculture globally
BlueNalu, a food company developing seafood products directly from fish cells, has sealed a strategic partnership with Nutreco, a Dutch provider of animal nutrition and aquafeed. Nutreco’s aquafeed company, Skretting, is a producer of feeds for farmed fish and an important link in the feed-to-food chain.
The two companies have formalised a partnership agreement, that builds upon BlueNalu’s platform technology for production of cell-based seafood products from a wide variety of species. This is intended to create a more stable and sustainable supply-chain solution as the global demand for seafood is continually increasing. Nutreco brings a breath of knowledge and deep expertise to the partnership, including fish nutrition, raw materials expertise and ingredient procurement at competitive costs. In a joint statement, both companies affirmed its technologies are well aligned to advance sustainable solutions to feed the world.
Lou Copperhouse, president and CEO of BlueNalu, said: “The partnership with Nutreco is another significant milestone for BlueNalu, which will enable our team to accelerate our journey towards commercialisation, while also securing a global supply chain partner. We expect this will provide significant value to our company, as it is our objective to introduce our seafood products in a test market during the next two years, and launch our products in several global markets by the end of this decade.”
The demand for protein, including seafood, will increase as the global population is expected to rise to almost 10 billion by 2050. Innovations and technologies, such as cell-based seafood, may be required to help to meet this demand in a sustainable manner. BlueNalu offers a third option that complements wild-caught and farm-raised seafood that benefits human health, encourages responsible food consumption and promotes food security.
Rob Koremans, CEO for Nutreco, concluded: “Since the global demand for protein is increasing, we need to provide protein from a variety of sources, including traditional aquaculture farming as well as new innovative solutions. Nutreco’s strategic partnership with BlueNalu is very exciting as it opens the opportunity to up-scale real seafood production in a highly sustainable way.”
