Born in 1955, Torben
Svejgaard is chief executive officer of the BioMar Group, headquartered in Denmark.
At 57 years he is an economist with close to 30 years’ experience in
B2B businesses with the first 25 years in the food ingredient area. From
1985-1991 he was marketing assistant and marketing manager at Aarhus Olie - speciality
vegetable oil products and soy protein concentrates.
Then from 1991-2008 he
held different upper management positions within Danisco (now Dupont), a world
leader in functional food ingredients plus biotech products for feed, biofuel
and technical purposes.
From 2004-2008 member
of Executive Committee, that is the top management team of the company. Since
2008, he has been Group CEO of BioMar, one the biggest fish feed producers with
a turnover in excess of €1 billion in 2012.
Will farming other species of fish follow the salmon example?
In my view, there is no doubt
that fish farming will become more and more professionalised over the coming
years. And it needs to if demand is to be met in a sustainable way as well as
in a cost-efficient way.
You can see this happening for
other species not just from a feeding point-of-view but also in farming. But it
would be fair to say salmon is where there has been the greatest progress and
where professional farming has been taken the furthermost. Let me add that this
doesn’t mean that salmon is a superior fish!
Other species will follow but at
different speeds and in different ways.
Tilapia in the USA for example,
has developed two distinctive markets – a frozen market, primarily supplied by
China, and a fresh market supplied mainly from Central plus the northern part
of South America. As a result tilapia now has two different market prices and
two sets of demands being placed on it.
With a further professionalism
of fish framing demands to fish feed suppliers will also increase, and we feel
in BioMar that we are well prepared for that.
Carp is a widely consumed fish species in China. Is carp likely to
challenge fish species in western/developed countries?
I don’t think so. Based on my
experiences from the food ingredient industry, people are conservative about
their food products choices and I would be very surprised if carp, which is a
quieter species than other, became a more commonly consumed fish in developed
countries.
Would that decision have anything to do with a fish species being a
herbivore or a carnivore?
Herbivores are by far the
largest portion of fish species in the world while carnivores are in the
minority. However, the future direction for demand will not be dependent on whether
a fish species is herbivore or carnivore but whether the consumer likes the
fish in question and to what extent we can develop a cost-effective production
system for that species to meet growing demand.
Comparatively, we have many different
species of fish being farmed today – when compared to chicken and pigs. There
is a clear need to choose those species that can be grown in a cost-efficient
way.
Does that mean fish has to be cheaper than chicken in the consumer’s
eyes to increase demand?
While in some supermarkets you
will find fish cheaper than chicken, the difficulty of the comparison is to
understand the cost of protein ratio between the two protein sources. A
relative price might mean something, but this is not a mathematical choice in
the eyes of the consumer. The consumer - at least the ones with a certain
income level - is not asking, “Should I feed my family on chicken or fish this
evening?” and basing that choice on what the price comparison is.
While, chicken is also very efficient
in converting feed into protein, fish is generally more efficient. With rising
commodity and protein prices in our raw materials the relative cost advantage
of fish over chicken will increase.
I think it’s important to
understand that consumers do not based their buying decision on price alone
despite the cost efficiency achieved in the production process greatly
influencing the price of the end product. Most shoppers buy fish because of the
virtues of fish in itself, not because it’s cheaper than chicken.
There is much discussion about achieving a production breakthrough one
kg of fish protein from one kg of feed. Is this a fair objective or is reducing
the use of fishmeal in diets a more critical issue?
Feed conversion is not about
achieving 1:1, but about the retention of energy and protein by a fish species
that gives it its efficiency. Assessment based on kg in and kg out is a little
artificial.
On the question of fishmeal, the
salmon industry, for example, is a net fish protein producer – we have reduced
protein fishmeal in diets to between 10-15 percent down from 30 percent over
time an extended period of time. However, that’s not the goal in itself. If we
take responsibility-sourced fishmeal and fish oil then we can make an upgrade
from other materials that would not have been sold as food products – otherwise
these products would have been wasted. That’s a rational objective for our
industry and we should try to demonstrate that to consumers.
There’s much talk about the challenge of feeding nine billion people on
the planet by 2050. Will fish play a central role in meeting this challenge?
Fish will play a role in feeding
the nine billion people by 2050. And this should be one of the roles of
professional fish farming, but we must also realise that this is only possible,
if the industry does it in a sustainable way both from a broad environmental
point of view and from an economical
point of view. If the industry does not make sufficient profit, the needed
growth will not happen. But farming can contribute to saving the world. We all
know our industry can do that.
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| Torben Svejgaard |
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