Seafood Carbon Collaboration - Next Steps
November 07, 2023
Grimsby headquartered Seafood Grimsby & Humber Alliance held its inaugural seafood de-carbonisation workshop in London in April. Hosted by The Fishmongers' Company, the workshop was attended by the UK's major retailers, food service providers, and seafood processors.
Facilitated by The Fishmongers' Company Court Member and carbon industry specialist, Dr. Henrietta Boyd, the workshop focused on decarbonisation of the global supply chain from catch to the UK's first point of landing and delivery. The invited attendees heard from major seafood processors including Young's Seafood, owned by Sofina Foods, along with Chessington and Grimsby based processor, New England Seafoods, about the initiative to identify and measure de-carbonisation actions that all UK retailers and food service organisations can collaborate with.
Excellent progress is being made with the Seafish Carbon Emissions Profiling Tool, and it is on track to launch in early December (wild fisheries component) as planned.
Since April the group have reported:
- Credibility: Seafish has appointed Blonk Sustainability Tools – a leading sustainability tools and life-cycle assessment (LCA) consultancy – as the lead delivery partner on its seafood emissions profiling tool project. Blonk is being supported by a UK Scientific Advisory Panel comprising leading UK researchers from across aquaculture, wild capture, LCA and mathematical modelling. The credibility of the tool was identified as a key priority through initial consultation with you – this verification process aims to build and strengthen the tool, building confidence in the methodology and results.
- Consultation: Engaged and productive design workshops have been conducted with the industry and continued industry involvement, including Beta-testing via user groups is due to commence next month, and will be crucial to the tool's overall success. We have seen a positive and deep level of engagement in the tool development stages, with some suggestions that are further enhancing the tool.
- Alignment: Seafish is conducting extensive project outreach across the UK seafood supply chain to build strong industry support behind one, easy to use tool profiling, with transparent methodology and consistent measurement. Seafish is delighted with the highly positive responses received. Ongoing industry involvement, including Beta-testing which will commence in November, will be crucial to the tool's success
- Launch: The wild capture component of the Tool is due to be launched in early December 2023 and the full Tool (including aquaculture) during March 2024.
Next steps
An event early next year will see the launch of the first, wild capture, phase of the emissions profiling tool and explore the next steps in decarbonising the seafood sector.