Ecuador’s Grupo Almar, one of the top five shrimp producers in the world, and health, nutrition and beauty company DSM-Firmenich have entered a joint multi-year commitment to measure and improve Grupo Almar’s environmental footprint using Sustell, which is DSM-Firmenich intelligent sustainability service.
The partnership will see Sustell used across all of Grupo Almar’s shrimp production and will also access DSM-Firmenich’s sustainability experience and expertise. Full environmental footprinting of Grupo Almar’s shrimp production will start in January 2024 and provide internationally-validated footprint results for the full-year 2024 onwards.
Grupo Almar, which produces approximately 10% of Ecuador´s exports by volume, explained that it wanted to formalise its sustainability journey and chose DSM-Firmenich and Sustell to accurately measure and validate its carbon footprint as part of a full ISO 14040/44 compliant lifecycle assessment (LCA) based environmental footprint. The company looked at an array of options and took inspiration from the salmon industry which has made significant progress in measuring and improving its environmental footprint thanks to tools like Sustell.
“Almar is making important and incremental progress to improve the sustainability of its shrimp production, by learning from others and by investing in technology – with tangible improvements already made,” Grupo Almar’s Chief Operating Officer Wolfgang Harten said.
“We are committed to continue moving forward, both in technology and in sustainability. Through our partnership with a global heavyweight in animal nutrition and health, DSM-Firmenich, we have our sights set firmly on improving the sustainability of our industry. We chose Sustell to go beyond measurement by taking ownership of our full environmental footprint, managing our footprint 24/7 within our own teams and organisation.”
Dr David Nickell, Vice President Sustainability and Business Solutions, Animal Nutrition & Health at DSM-Firmenich called Grupo Almar “a first mover” in the shrimp industry, and said that with Sustell, it will possess both a full, accurate environmental footprint and the scenario testing capabilities to map and make tangible improvements in sustainability.
“As seen from Sustell users around the world and across multiple industries, this then opens the door to greater production efficiency and farm profitability while unlocking new value opportunities, such as product eco-labelling, and access to sustainable finance,” Nickell said.
It’s intended that the collaboration between Grupo Almar and DSM-Firmenich will not only support Grupo Almar’s environmental footprint reduction, but by validating the shrimp module for Sustell, it will enable the wider shrimp production value chain to improve its sustainability.
Commenting on the announcement, Pamela Nath, Director of the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership (SSP), stated, “We welcome this announcement and the concrete efforts this embodies, demonstrating that Ecuadorian shrimp production is committed to producing shrimp with sustainable practices. We hope that this will continue to inspire and motivate the industry to go even further in improving the sustainability of shrimp production.”
