The feed innovation Baltic Blend made fish farming more sustainable

Since June 2016, the innovation Baltic Blend has been used in all Raisioaqua feeds. Fish meal and oil made of the Baltic Sea fish are used as raw materials for the Baltic Blend feeds. When the fish farmed in the Baltic Sea area are fed using local feeds, nutrients are recycled and not brought to the Baltic Sea from outside. With Baltic Blend, the environmental impact of Raisioaqua’s feed customers will be significantly lower as the phosphorus load from fish farming turns negative and the nitrogen load is reduced to a fraction of what it was before. 

Nutrient recycling is one of the pillars of sustainable food chain. Until now, fishmeal and oil made of the fish from the world’s oceans have been used also in the Finnish fish feeds; now they can be replaced by fishmeal and oil made of the Baltic Sea fish. This way, nutrients will not be brought to the Baltic Sea from outside. 

With Raisioaqua's innovation Baltic Blend, the same amount or even more phosphorus and nitrogen is removed, in the form of herring used for fishmeal production, from the Baltic Sea than generated from the farming. According to the Natural Resources Institute Finland, strong herring and sprat stocks in the Baltic Sea are considered sustainable, so the local feed production is not harmful to natural fish stocks. 

A significant reduction in the Baltic Sea nutrient loading

A total of 13,000,000 kg of fish a year is farmed in Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Finland. The feeding  earlier based on raw materials brought from the world’s oceans has produced 60,000 kg of phosphorus load and 507,000 kg of nitrogen load each year. When the Baltic Sea feed Baltic Blend is introduced, significant nutrient load reductions will be achieved. On an annual basis, phosphorus will be reduced by 75,000 kg and nitrogen by 377,000 kg, so sustainable fish farming will decrease the nutrient load in the Baltic Sea. 

Raisioaqua has also developed a feeding concept Hercules Opti allowing the replacement of fish oil used in fish feeding by rapeseed oil while maintaining high levels of omega-3 fatty acids of fish. Already from 2009, the Hercules feeds contain phytase enzyme. Due to the enzyme, the phosphorus load into the water system decreased by 26 per cent.

Feeds have a significant impact on the sustainability of fish farming. WWF Finland added Finnish farmed rainbow trout on the green list of its Seafood Guide in 2014 and Finnish farmed whitefish in 2016. Several Raisio’s fish feed innovations have reduced the environmental impacts of fish farming