Marine Harvest Chile has completed the Best Aquaculture Practices’ (BAP) new multi-site zone cluster program, resulting in nine of its salmon farm sites and two of its processing plants attaining BAP certification, the Global Aquaculture Alliance announced on February 2.
Thanks to the biosecurity measures implemented by Chile’s regulatory authorities, the BAP multi-site zone cluster program is an ideal fit for Chile’s salmon and mussel facilities. The program allows an applicant with multiple farm sites in a federally set zone, also known as a “barrio,” or neighborhood, to apply for BAP certification for more than one site at a time. In addition to multi-site zone cluster, farms can be certified as a group.
“At Marine Harvest, we are proud to achieve three-star BAP for our operations in Chile, which confirms the high standards of our operations, our commitment toward sustainability and our engagement with our customers,” said Gianfranco Nattero, the company’s managing director of sales and marketing in the Americas. “This certification will allow us to continue to grow and develop the salmon category in the US market.”
“We are extremely pleased that Marine Harvest Chile achieved BAP certification with two processing plants and nine farms, which is demonstrating real change on the water,” said Peter Redmond, BAP’s vice president of market development. “The BAP program continues to be dynamic and responsive to the marketplace’s needs. The new group and multi-site zone cluster programs finally allow for multiple farms to apply for certification at one time rather than one farm at a time. It’s costly and, in a lot of cases, unnecessary.
The feed mill that Marine Harvest Chile uses for its farms is already BAP certified, so the company is essentially going from no BAP stars to three star BAP overnight.
About BAP
A division of the Global Aquaculture Alliance, Best Aquaculture Practices is an international certification program based on achievable, science-based and continuously improved global performance standards for the entire aquaculture supply chain — farms, hatcheries, processing plants and feed mills — that assure healthful foods produced through environmentally and socially responsible means.
About Marine Harvest
Headquartered in Bergen, Norway, Marine Harvest ASA is one of the biggest seafood companies in the world, and the largest producer of Atlantic salmon. It employs 11,715 people, is represented in 23 countries, and supplies farm-raised salmon and processed seafood products to more than 70 markets worldwide. In 2014 Marine Harvest, which is listed on stock exchanges in Oslo and New York, rang up sales of NOK 25 billion. Estimated salmon production for 2015 is 430,000 tons.
