FoodCorp gets world's first ORIVO certification for fishmeal traceability

Santiago, Chile-based FoodCorp, a supplier of seafood including fishmeal and fish oil, canned and frozen fish, and giant squid for direct and indirect human consumption, has become the first pelagic fish producer in the world to validate the traceability of the raw material it uses in fishmeal production via ORIVO’s laboratory.

Founded in 2014, Molde, Norway-based aquaculture feed ingredients laboratory ORIVO serves as an independent third-party verifier aiming to meet global consumer demand for transparent, sustainable feed and supplements.

“We recognize the growing demand for transparency and traceability in the supply chain,” FoodCorp General Manager Andrés Daroch said in a release. “As a fishing industry, we have made significant progress in the last decade in working under international standards that directly align with the sustainability of fisheries. And now, with the third-party certification from ORIVO, we are able to validate this work in a good manner.”

FoodCorp is owned by Norway’s Austevoll Seafood. It operates in Chile's Biobío region and has a processing plant in the borough of Coronel, where it produces frozen and preserved fish, as well as fishmeal and fish oil mainly derived from horse mackerel, sardine, and anchovy.

In the first six months of 2022, nearly 82 percent of the raw material processed by FoodCorp was frozen and preserved foods for direct human consumption, with the remainder going toward the production of fishmeal and fish oil for the animal feed market. Both of the company's markets – human consumption and animal feed – have high standards for traceability and “it is important for our clients that we have an accreditation which is based on actual evidence,” Daroch said.

“Through advanced laboratory testing, ORIVO confirms that our fishmeal is based on the raw material we say it is, and that there are no other species or other ingredients added,” he said. “To our clients, this is a guarantee of quality and sustainable management of fisheries.”

At the end of 2020, ORIVO obtained funding from the Norwegian Research Council to create a next-generation DNA-based analytical tool for feed products and feed ingredients, with Danish aquaculture feed producer BioMar partnering on the project.

Photo courtesy of ORIVO