MareDura - Sustainable protein from marine raw materials

Important results from the project

With MareDura, we wanted produce a sustainable, high-quality protein ingredient for feed, which can replace unsustainable ingredients such as fishmeal and imported soy protein. The overall objectives were a customized product, a verified and scalable business model, and an agreement on continued commercialization process with at least one customer. We now have a product that has been tested on live fish and a business model for the aquarium industry. There are ongoing discussions with players in the sector, but we do not have any finalized commercialization agreements yet.

Expected long term effects

We have worked out a functional process for production of a protein-rich powder, by growing a marine yeast strain on two different by-streams from the food industry. We have scaled up to 300-liter and also tested the powder in feed for rainbow trout, with good results. For the production scale we are currently working on, the preliminary design shows production costs in an order of magnitude that is better suited for aquarium feed than for aquaculture. However, there is good hope of lowering the costs in the future, with further upscaling and industrial symbiosis.

Approach and implementation

This project started at an early verification stage and the production development has ranged from selection of substrate and yeast, to production on a pilot scale, but most of the steps have been brought out according to plan. For the business development, we started communicating with the industry from start. We realized early on that our production scale was insufficient for testing in the aquaculture industry, so we switched focus and built relationships with the aquarium feed segment first. This has been successful, but time-consuming, and will continue after project completion.