Novel ingredients
At Nutreco, we believe that to sustainably feed a growing world population, we cannot rely only on conventional ingredients.
Particularly in tumultuous times, the priority for our Procurement team is availability – ensuring we have the right nutrients available at the right location, to ensure uninterrupted supply to our customers. As commodity prices remain high, we are focusing on alternative ingredients and suppliers to spread the risk and address sustainability challenges. This has created opportunities for several novel ingredients to become more competitive.
Our target
5-10% of feed ingredients to come from alternative novel sources.
Our progress
In 2023, we further increasing in novel ingredients, our overall inclusion rate from 0.8 to 1 % of total raw materials purchased. The volume increase was partially due to our increased usage of omega 3 alternatives, such as algae and omega 3 canola oil. Several of these oils are now commercially available and implemented in most of our aquafeed businesses. We saw good momentum behind the introduction of novel vegetable raw materials, such as horse bean starch and concentrated maize distillers' grains, and we are pleased that these products, developed specifically for the feed industry, are finding their way into animals’ diets.
We increased our use of novel ingredients in 2023, bringing the total to 1 %. Nutreco uses novel ingredients where market conditions permit
How we do it
Nutreco is only able to achieve this progress by constantly focusing on novel market opportunities. We fully utilise our global procurement, quality assurance and R&D resources to identify, develop and implement ingredients that fit into our novel strategy, which is to focus first and foremost on low-footprint and right-cost ingredients.
Bringing novel ingredients to customers
Nutreco has long believed that the only way to make real progress in sustainability is to work together with other stakeholders in the supply chain.