Supply chain process mapping for the SUPREME project

The Norwegian seafood industry places emphasis on maximising utilisation of its catches and has through strategic improvements significantly increased utilisation in recent years by implementing improvements throughout the entire value chain. There are nevertheless still opportunities for improvements. The Norwegian research institute SINTEF estimates that approximately 120,000 tons of whitefish rest raw materials were discarded or wasted in some other form in 2019. Overwhelming majority of these are contributed to the sea-going fleet, which consists of large freezer trawlers, processing vessels, longliners and wetfish trawlers. These vessels travel long distances to their fishing grounds and challenge to increase utilisation of rest raw materials due to limited freezing capacities, lack of storage space, low value of the rest raw materials and limited human resources. The SUPREME project was initiated in order to address these challenges.

The primary objective of the SUPREME project is to increase the resource utilisation and value creation from whitefish rest raw materials from the Norwegian sea-going fleet into valuable ingredients. This report provides an overview of the main findings of task 1.1 in of the project, which focuses on mapping and logistics management of rest raw materials for the Norwegian fishing industry. This report gives a summary of Norwegian fisheries industry, its current use of rest raw materials and identifies potential alternatives for improved utilization. The report also provides benchmarking with the Icelandic seafood industry and presents case studies where concreate examples for improvements are shown. 

This report is only a first step of many in the SUPREME project, and will feed into other tasks. For further information on the project and its outcome, please visit https://www.sintef.no/projectweb/supreme/