Austevoll's Austral Group seeing dividends from sustainable practices in Peru

San Isidro, Peru-based fishing company Austral Group, a producer of fishmeal, fish oil, canned fish, and frozen fish, has been rewarded for its longstanding focus on sustainability, according to the company's CEO, Adriana Giudice.

Austral, which operates 19 fishing vessels and four processing plants in Peru, and which is owned by the Norwegian group Austevoll Seafood, produces about 10 percent of the fishmeal and fish oil that Peru exports, and has yearly sales of roughly USD 200 million (EUR 189 million).  

The company recently secured a USD 22 million (EUR 20.8 million) green loan from local financial institution Interbank. Austral Group CEO Adriana Giudice told SeafoodSource the company had to hit several sustainability metrics in order to qualify for the reduced-rate financing.

“We were able to access this loan thanks to our history of sustainability, but to obtain this loan, we were asked to meet specific environmental and social goals. The interest rate was reduced, more favorable when compared to general market rates, and is based on [key performance indicators] in meeting certain sustainability goals,” she said.

The sustainable credit granted by Interbank has a preferential rate of 5.30 percent, with maturity in 10 years, “which is a fairly long time considering the conditions offered to companies in Peru,” Giudice said. The loan, which will go towards restructuring debt, is conditioned upon Austral Group delivering an annual report to Interbank regarding sustainability KPIs based on two programs and will be audited in the fifth and tenth year by a third party. There is a 0.05 percent penalty on the interest rate if the KPIs are not met, and a 0.05 percent reduction in the rate if the indicators are met.

The two environmental and social areas of focus are the “Net Positiva” program, which involves a series of initiatives by Austral, and a training program for youth in fishing communities.

Under the Net Positiva program, Austral will continue to work with Social Bureo, a company that collects Austral’s disused fishing nets to recycle and transform them into pellets. The pellets are then used as raw material to produce new products such as sporting goods, sunglasses, and clothing. In 2021 alone, a total of 341 metric tons (MT) of disused fishing nets were collected – reducing greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 423,708 kilograms.

Also in coordination with Bureo, Austral implemented a socio-environmental fund to develop programs that contribute to fishing communities in the company’s areas of influence. The company has already implemented multiple initiatives, including working with local social organizations to organize beach clean-ups and develop an artisanal fishing center to positively impact on local economic development and ensure local fishermen have adequate housing.

Moving forward, Austral's involvement with the Net Positiva program will focus on an additional initiatives: implementing a program to capture air humidity and transform it into drinkable water for schoolchildren in the fishing town of Coishcowhere currently there is no access to a continuous supply of potable water; Developing an eco-school and implementing an environmental awareness and education program for local students and teachers; Developing an artificial wetland for the generation of groundwater to facilitate irrigation; and implementing community initiatives under a circular economy model based on the repurposing of Austral’s disused fishing nets.

Austral also plans to expand a program offering increased training for young adults in fishing communities. Austral has partnered with the Forge Foundation in taking the “Tu Futuro” program to Coishco, Pisco, Chancay, and Ilo, among other fishing towns. The program targets young adults between 18 and 24 years old who have finished high school but who have been unable to find work or lack access to institutions of higher learning.

The program provides full scholarship funding for a six-month training program in soft skills and a technical career in areas such as logistics, sales, and customer service, followed by assistance in their job searches. So far in 2022, 80 such scholarships have been awarded to young people, and Austral has committed to support youth development and training for another 10 years, Giudice said. In 2020, 101 scholarship-holders participated in the program: 77 from the communities in Austral’s areas of influence (Coishco, Chancay, and Callao), and 24 children of Austral employees. In 2021, the company was able to land 44 percent of its scholarship beneficiaries in jobs under its labor accompaniment initiative.

“We have a long history of working towards sustainability with a focus on the triple bottom line – social, environmental, and financial,” Giudice said. “In Peru, Austral was the first company to use steam-drying at the beginning of the 1990s in making fishmeal, and we were also the first company to obtain ISO 14,001 certification for all of our plants and our fleet. We have a number of other certifications such as Friend of the Sea, ISO 9001  – we have always led the sector in terms of sustainability and environmental stewardship.”

Further, the company has been a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact for over a decade, and its sustainable management practices are geared toward alignments with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, Guidice said.

Besides the programs carried out with the communities in its areas of influence, Austral is working to improve the sustainability of its logistics chain, including its network of small fishers that supply the company.

Photo courtesy of the Austral Group