Coming just days after Skretting and Veramaris announced they had supported Supermarché Match to launch sustainably raised trout, the two companies have today revealed another breakthrough in bringing sustainable seafood to market.

French retail group Auchan, one of the world’s largest retailers is introducing a ground-breaking trout, raised on a novel feed by Skretting enriched with algal oil from Veramaris and insect meal.

Crucially, and for the first time, the entire value chain came together to create a unique consumer proposition, combining farming, feed efficiency and alternative ingredients. Together, they achieved a significant boost of the nutritional value from the algal oils, while ingeniously replacing the forage fish with insect meal and fish trimmings. It’s the sustainable usage of a previously discarded resource.

Not only does this provide consumers with healthier and more sustainable seafood as a result of increased levels of EPA and DHA omega-3, the innovative feed composition also constitutes further progress to ensure finite resources like fishmeal are not compromised.

Olivier Vandebeulque, Head of Seafood Category at Auchan, was fundamental in bringing the new value chain together including Skretting, Truite Service, InnovaFeed and Veramaris. At the Paris International Agricultural Show (SIA 2020) the partners presented the product innovation.

He said: “At Auchan, we believe in sustainable seafood. We are encouraged to see a shift in the value chain pioneered by Veramaris and Skretting and believe that our customers will see the value. Trout is just the first step for us, and we look forward to extending our collaborative value chain approach to further species such as shrimp, salmon, bream and bass.” 

Elodie Petit is Marketing Manager at Skretting France, she said: “The decision by Auchan to introduce trout fed on our unique and technologically advanced diet is a real testament to the quality of the product. We know that French consumers don’t want to compromise and demand their seafood to be as tasty as it is nutritious and sustainable, which has been proven by the 12% category growth at Supermarché Match following their launch of algal-fed salmon. We are pleased to be able to support this growth with sustainable, quality feeds.”

Gaëlle Husser, Global Business Development Director at Veramaris, said: “Veramaris’ algal oil may be a small part of aqua diets, yet it has a major impact on the nutritional value and environmental profile of farmed fish. With the well-known benefits of eating a diet rich in omega-3, our algal oil enables fish producers to raise the levels of both EPA and DHA Omega-3 with no additional contribution from wild forage fish. Working closely with feed producer Skretting, we are playing a small yet important part in making sustainably nutritious trout and salmon available to consumers.” 

Consumers will be able to buy and enjoy this healthy and sustainably fed fish when it reaches the shelves of Auchan in March 2020.