As a result of stagnating fisheries and fast growth of aquaculture production, aquaculture is becoming the main source of fish and seafood in most parts of the globe. This new reality will result in major opportunities as well as challenges for the aquafeed industry which supplies on average 50% of the production cost in aquaculture operations. The aquafeed industry is expanding extremely fast and maturing from a young, pioneering industry into a more professional activity. Nutritional know-how is still far more limited compared to agrifeed milling. An increasing degree of specialization is required to be able to respond to the dynamic environment of horizontal and vertical integration.

Integrators require more regional feedmilling operations and call for optimizing cost-efficiency of feed in view of the total production cost. Aquaculture is a consumer driven market where farm-to-fork assurance of product quality and food safety is crucial. The aquafeed industry is, in particular, challenged to prove its sustainability and become less dependent from marine ingredients originating from limited fisheries resources. INVE Aquaculture offers the best of its research and development capabilities, innovative products, customer services and nutritional/technological expertise to assist the feed milling industry for taking up these challenges. INVE Aquaculture – pioneer in specialty nutrition for hatchery production of marine fish and shrimp since the early eighties - has over a decade of experience in providing nutritional and health solutions for grow-out stages of various species of fish and shrimp worldwide. INVE Aquaculture’s unique approach to the aquafeed mill segment is based on its farm-to-fork insight in the aquaculture food chain and complemented by the global experience of the INVE group in specialty premixes and additives. The core of this activity is supported by INVE AquaFeed Experts, a multidisciplinary team of experts in design, formulation, quality control, processing and marketing of aquaculture feeds.

CUSTOMER-ORIENTED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT FOCUSED ON GROWOUT STAGES

At INVE TECHNOLOGIES, the R&D company of the INVE group, a multidisciplinary team of nutritional engineers, veterinaries and feed technologists focus on the development of nutritional and health solutions for the grow-out stages of various aquaculture species. INVE Aquaculture scientists make use of state-of-the-art equipment and facilities including the central analytical laboratory, a pilot plant for the production of test feeds and test centers to screen productsolutions. INVE Aquaculture’s scientists share their experience and research facilities with its customers for jointly investigating customer-specific problems and developing practical solutions.

INNOVATIVE RANGE OF SPECIALTY PREMIXES

INVE Aquaculture’s scientific competences have been at the basis of important innovations in aquaculture nutrition and health. Novel concepts have been verified under field conditions at selected customers’ farms and are currently applied either as specialty product or tailored to a customerspecific solution. Key product lines include Aquasterol (specialty premix to boost lipid nutrition in shrimp), Sanoguard® Aquastim (speciesspecific premix of immunostimulants and nutrients to enhance disease/stress resistance), Aquaflavour (species-specific premix containing enhancers of palatability, feed
uptake and protein digestion), Fish Essence /Shrimp Essence (range of premixes to supply the essentials of nutrition for different life stages for a wide diversity of fish and shrimp species), Sanolife® FMC
(selected probiotic premix for application in the feedmill).

CUSTOMER SERVICES

Current challenges in the rapidly expanding aquafeed industry enhance the need for specialization and strategic partnering in the supply chain. INVE Aquaculture’s world-wide expertise in aquafeed milling, its strong R&D capacity, innovative range of specialty premixes and specialist image in the aquaculture market constitute the base for an ample assortment of customer services. INVE Aquaculture’s practical experience in feed mill design and processing conditions proves very useful in startup projects of new feed plants. Their aquafeed experts work side-by-side with our customers to reach better profitability and product quality at the feedmill and/or farm.

By Peter Coutteau