Marine by-products processing

Marine by-products represent on average 50% of the weight of the caught product. Only 50% is directly consumed in the form of fillets or meat. Adding value to marine by-products is therefore a real challenge.

Against a backdrop of declining landed volumes, adding value to co-products can provide :

• additional income for fishing, primary and secondary processing companies;

• a complementary source of marine proteins on the food market;

• high value-added molecules with interesting properties;

• a response to the issue of sustainable development by transforming waste into raw materials, thus contributing to a process of resource preservation and optimization of resource use.

Various processes are used to obtain products with varying degrees of added value: cooking in the case of fishmeal, hydrolysis to solubilize proteins, mechanical separation to obtain pulp, centrifugal decantation to extract oil and solubilized proteins, filtration to extract and concentrate molecules of interest, and drying to stabilize the products obtained.

Technological choices depend on the volumes available, the investment required, the content of compounds of interest - which varies widely from one species to another - and market expectations.

The article presents the main uses and illustrates the wide range of possible uses for these co-products.