Mowi has been ranked the most sustainable protein producer for the third year in a row by the award-nominated Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index, published December 1st.

This research, now in its fourth edition, assesses 60 of the largest listed global meat, dairy and aquaculture companies on ten environmental, social and governance themes aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Overall, Mowi scored 81 out of 100 and was rated ‘Industry Best’ against many of the criteria aligned to the SDGs, including greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation and biodiversity, use of antibiotics, animal welfare, working conditions, food safety and governance.

Speaking about Mowi’s ranking on the Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index, CEO Ivan Vindheim said: “This shows again that Mowi is at the forefront of sustainable food production. I am proud and humbled to lead a company and an organisation that is a recognised leader in sustainable food production. Importantly, the Index highlights that aquaculture and salmon farming is part of the solution toward shifting to a green economy.”

Chief Sustainability and Technology Officer, Catarina Martins, added: “I am delighted to see Mowi’s sustainability strategy and achievements being recognised in this global rating. For three years in a row now, Mowi is considered the most sustainable animal protein producer in the world. This achievement is the result of hard work and passion for what we do every day: producing food that is good for people and good for the planet!”

 

Focus on aquaculture

The 2021 report found that aquaculture companies, primarily salmon companies, continue to perform better than land animal protein producers on all risk factors, especially deforestation and biodiversity and antibiotics. On average, aquaculture also shows the most improvement year on year, demonstrating the sector’s focus on managing its sustainability risks versus its land-based peers. Companies headquartered in Europe are paying more attention to deforestation and antibiotic risks, making them the strongest performing region. In fact, Mowi is joined in the top five ranked companies by fellow aquaculture companies Grieg Seafood ASA and Lerøy Seafood Group ASA, both headquartered in Norway, who are ranked 2nd and 4th respectively.

About the Coller FAIRR Index

The Index is designed to provide financial institutions with best-in-class data, analytics and trends on the protein sector to integrate into their investment decisions and engagement strategies and is positively shaping trends in the $1.6 trillion global protein market, by shedding light on where corporate policy or disclosure is behind the curve. It has become the go-to resource for investors to assess how well key suppliers in the food chain are managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks:

  1. Greenhouse gas emissions
  2. Deforestation & biodiversity
  3. Water use & scarcity
  4. Waste & pollution
  5. Antibiotics
  6. Working conditions
  7. Animal welfare
  8. Food safety
  9. Governance
  10. Sustainable proteins

Click here for more information about the Coller FAIRR Index

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We’re proud to report that we have held our position at the top of the league table of sustainable protein producers compiled by the FAIRR Initiative, published recently.

Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index assesses the world’s 60 largest publicly-listed animal protein producers, worth a combined USD 338 billion. Firms are ranked against ten environmental, social and governance (ESG)-related criteria including GHG emissions, deforestation, antibiotic usage and working conditions.

“The fact that Mowi is one of only three companies to be ranked as low risk is a testament to the vision of our leadership team and the commitment of everybody at Mowi to execute this vision. 2020 has been and continues to be a challenging year for all businesses but as we approach the end of the year, I hope that this achievement instils a sense of pride with every member of staff,” says our CEO Ivan Vindheim.

Climate commitments

The authors of the Index were disappointed by the overall progress made by other sectors, especially meat and dairy suppliers, towards climate commitments. 86% of major meat and dairy suppliers failed to declare or set meaningful reduction targets for all greenhouse gas emissions.

Catarina Martins, Chief Sustainability Officer, explained Mowi’s progress against stated climate commitments: “We have adopted a global approach to climate change, through the development of a low-carbon business model. We have developed a low carbon transition plan which includes a comprehensive evaluation of our impact on climate change, relevant climate-related risks and opportunities, as well as proposals for climate change mitigation measures. We continue to work towards these targets and be transparent about our progress.”

Click here for a summary report of the FAIRR Index

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June 8 is World Oceans Day. The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) is launching a new global digital campaign on this day, to help consumers understand that their daily buying habits are having a big impact.

Oceans have been described as the lungs of our planet: they provide oxygen for breathing and regulate the climate. They contain 80 percent of our world’s biodiversity. The oceans feed over 3 billion people across the world every day. For us to live, they need the oceans to thrive, now and in the future. However, more than 30% of the oceans are overfished.

By choosing products with the blue MSC label, you choose against overfishing and for sustainably caught fish and seafood. Small choices help protect our oceans and create a ‘big blue future’.

When selecting and choosing products our focus is therefore on sustainable fishery and aquaculture methods and on safeguarding biodiversity. To achieve this we actively cooperate with a network of suppliers, customers, researchers and universities at home and abroad. This way we aim to make an active contribution to new environmentally and socially sustainable developments.

By far the largest part of the fish species that are processed by Mowi Lemmer are from MSC certified sustainable fisheries or from ASC certified responsible aquaculture. Our product range offers a large number of products which have been certified according to independent standards for sustainable fisheries (MSC) or responsible aquaculture (ASC).

Mowi Lemmer holds ‘chain-of-custody’ certificates for MSC, ASC and GLOBALG.A.P. , which ensure that the products we sell with one of these labels are really coming from certified sustainable fisheries or certified responsible farms.

 

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On September 4, the 2019 Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index has been released, which analyses the 60 largest listed producers of animal proteins (meat, dairy and aquaculture) for human consumption globally by combining nine environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk factors with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Index is the world’s only benchmark dedicated to profiling animal protein producers. It shows critical gaps and areas of best practice in the sector.

The nine risk and opportunity factors assessed by the Index include:

  1. Food safety
  2. Waste and pollution
  3. Working conditions
  4. Water scarcity
  5. Antibiotics
  6. Greenhouse gas emissions
  7. Sustainable proteins
  8. Animal welfare
  9. Deforestation and biodiversity loss

We cooperated closely with the assessors throughout the process. Alf-Helge Aarskog, Mowi’s CEO, said: “To be ranked as the best performer on this global index is a fantastic achievement for Mowi and proof that social responsibility and sustainability is embedded in every level of our business and part of our culture. We will continue to strive for continuous improvement and lead the Blue Revolution.”

The final company rankings are based on some exceptional realisations:

  • We were recognised as one of few organisations for our commitment to set a science-based target for greenhouse gas emissions reductions.
  • Our efforts for animal welfare and certification in Scotland have been recognised as an exceptional realisation.
  • Our knowledge and experience to prevent sea lice have been highlighted as best practice within the sector.

Catarina Martins, Chief Sustainability Officer for the Mowi Group, added: “This is a great recognition of the work we do at Mowi to reduce our footprint and continue improving the way we operate.”

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After the success of its first Global Cleanup Day held in May 2018, it was decided to make this an annual tradition at Mowi. On May 3, a Mowi Lemmer team set out to take care of the Dutch contribution to this global initiative for a cleaner environment.

A larger area – less litter

Last year, the Lemmer colleagues collected over 100kg of litter from the Lemmer beach only. This year, the 8-person Cleanup team set out to first clean the Mowi Lemmer premises and then split up into two groups: two people removed the litter from the banks of the Lemmer marina, while the others took care of cleaning the beach. All in all, they found less litter than during their beach cleaning activities of last year, which is a positive signal!

 

Cleaning up around the world

Teams from Mowi sites around the world participated in Global Cleanup Day. A few impressions:

In one hour, Mowi Boulogne removed 100kg of litter from the local beach

Big bags of litter – Mowi Canada-East

Cleanup Day in Poland on their national holiday: a real family effort with an impressive result: almost 1000kg of rubbish collected in Gdansk

Mowi Chile staff working hard to clean up a local beach

 Recently published: Mowi’s policy on plastic use and plastics waste management

Mowi depends on healthy oceans. Next to making our Global Cleanup Day a recurring event, Mowi recently also published a policy on plastic use and plastics waste management, in order to  reduce the use of plastic, to make sure that plastic waste is handled in a responsible manner and to ensure that our sites are kept clean.

Reduce, reuse, recycle: Managing plastic

Do you want to know more about some of Mowi’s initiatives to reduce, reuse and recycle plastic? You’ll find some interesting stories about reducing the weight of plastic trays and upcycling of used salmon farming nets on Mowi’s corporate website.

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Marine Harvest has topped the new Coller FAIRR* Protein Producer Index. This index is the world’s first comprehensive assessment of how 60 of the world’s biggest farmers of meat, fish and dairy are managing their sustainability risks.

The assessment looked at environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors. Each company’s performance was evaluated on 22 KPIs, with regard to pollution, climate change, food safety, animal health & welfare and worker safety.

Overview of the risk factors on which the FAIRR Index ranked 60 of the world’s largest protein producing companies

It found that although more than half of the companies investigated are failing to properly document their impact, salmon farming companies rank among the most sustainable.

“In general, aquaculture companies lead the animal proteins sector in the quality of their reporting of critical sustainability issues. Europe-based aquaculture producers – Marine Harvest, Lerøy Seafood and Bakkafrost – display management best practice and disclosure across all eight scored risk factors.”

Marine Harvest was the top ranked company with an overall score of 81.9 out of 100, scoring well across all areas. It was highlighted, in particular, for its approach to antibiotics. “Their robust policies and performance on antibiotic use are complemented by a comprehensive discussion of fish welfare.”

The top-10 of the overall FAIRR Protein Producer Index/De top-10 van de FAIRR Protein Producer Index ranglijst

For a brief executive summary on the FAIRR Protein Producer Index, see:
http://www.fairr.org/coller-fairr-protein-producer-index/

A detailed summary of the report can be found here.​

*FAIRR, founded by Jeremy Coller, Chief Investment Officer of Coller Capital (one of the world’s leading investment companies), is a collaborative investor network that raises awareness of material ESG risks and opportunities in global animal protein supply chains. FAIRR helps investors identify, prioritize and act on these factors through cutting-edge research and collaborative investor engagements with global food companies.

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Marine Harvest arranged its first Global cleanup day on May 4, 2018. Marine Harvest Sterk contributed to this initiative by cleaning the Lemmer beach from (plastic) litter.

We depend on healthy oceans

Plastic pollution has become one of the largest environmental problems we face today. Huge amounts of plastic waste are released to the oceans every day, impacting our waters and the marine life.

Marine Harvest depends on healthy ocean. We will therefore do our part to reduce the use of plastic, to make sure that plastic waste is handled in a responsible manner and to ensure that our sites are kept clean. Throughout 2018, Marine Harvest will be engaged in a number of different projects and initiatives related to plastic use and waste. The first initiative was Global cleanup day on May 4.

The cleanup team on the Lemmer beach received spontaneous help from some (young) bathers!

Marine Harvest Sterk cleans the Lemmer beach

A group of colleagues from Marine Harvest Sterk went to the Lemmer beach on May 4 – armed with garbage pickers and garbage bags – to clean it from litter. They collected an amount of over 100kg of litter, a large part of which was plastic waste!

We are proud of this great result and of our contribution to reducing plastic pollution!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Armed with pickers and garbage bags to clean up the beach

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Mowi Group has operations around the world

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