Moving towards a more sustainable fish industry
Atlanfish Ltd., based in Carndonagh, Co. Donegal is a leading processor of Irish seafood products. The CGPP project at Atlanfish aimed to study and monitor the consumption of natural resources and implement process improvements to reduce waste. During the project a production management system was implemented to monitor the generation of waste through the production process. Through the auditing of the information generated by the production management system and studies of water and energy use throughout the process, a number of process improvements were implemented. These included the refitting of process cooling vessels and the installation of a centralised washing system to reduce water use and the lagging of steam pipes to reduce energy losses.
Other changes were made to the purchasing system to encourage fishermen to return underweight or sub-standard material back to the sea and re-use rejected material as bait. These improvements have helped the company to reduce water usage by almost 26% and product wastage by almost 2%. This has resulted in savings of over €11,000 per annum and increased sales by over €150,000 per annum. Other improvements implemented since the beginning of the first CGPP project include an increase in recycling from 0 to 95%, resulting in savings of around €23,000 per annum on disposal costs.
For further details, download the Atlanfish PDF.
