DENMARK
feasible the next issue would be to find a market. While Nordisk Tang is an obvious customer, its current monthly requirements do not exceed what Kattegat Seaweed expects to collect in a day. Other potential customers include seafood processing and exporting companies that are based in and around Grenaa. Turkey is also a potential market. Davai has just built three bridges in Turkey and now has a network of reliable
contacts, whom it can draw on, if it decides to sell the seaweed there. The most important thing is to find the customers who buy into the story behind the seaweed – its healthfulness, quality, the fact that it is from clear Danish waters – and are willing to pay the price that will make it financially viable to produce it. The objective should not be to sell large volumes, but to find a level, where everything, price, quality, volume, is in balance.
Kattegat Seaweed Grenaa Denmark
Managing Director: Kim Brueld Olesen Activity: Cultivating seaweed, harvesting wild seaweed Products: Fresh and frozen seaweed Applications: Human consumption, animal and fish feed, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, fertiliser Expected volumes: 1 tonne/day
Tel.: +45 8630 1236 davai@davai.dk
Plastix’ products contribute to improving the environment
Recycling discarded fishing gear A company in Denmark, Plastix, has established a way to reuse lost or abandoned fishing gear by converting it into pellets that can be used to produce plastic items. This gives multiple benefits for the environment.
A
s demand for finite resources continues to grow and as efforts to access them contribute to environmental degradation, it is becoming increasingly apparent that more efficient use and re-use of resources offers both economic and environmental benefits. The take-make-consume-dispose pattern of growth that has existed essentially since the industrial revolution1 is based on the assumption that resources are cheap and easy to dispose of, a belief that today is increasingly being questioned.
Better resource efficiency offers many advantages Opposed to this linear model is what is known as the circular economy where products keep their value for as long as possible within the economy by being repeatedly reused and thereby 1 A zero waste programme for Europe /* COM/2014/0398 final/2 */
delivering the maximum value and reducing waste. The circular economy offers potentially huge savings. Studies have shown that improved resource efficiency in European industry could reduce raw material needs by 17-24 by 2030 and result in savings of EUR630bn per year. The switch to a circular economy would create new products, new markets, and value for business, and companies are constantly working to improve resource management. One of the companies that is involved in this quest is Plastix, a Danish firm based in Lemvig. Plastix takes discarded fishing nets and trawls and converts them into recyclates that in turn can be used to manufacture a number of plastic products. The problem of marine litter was highlighted in the declaration from the G7 meeting in Germany in 2015, which acknowledged that marine litter, and plastics in particular, posed a global challenge to marine and coastal life and ecosystems and potentially also to human health. While marine litter comprises many different
The Plastix operation that converts waste into value benefiting the environment in the process.
articles made of a wide range of materials, plastics are ubiquitous and represent a high proportion of the waste found in the water, on the seabed, on beaches, and increasingly now, also in the guts of fish. Recent research has even found evidence of chemicals used to make plastics present in organisms inhabiting some of the deepest oceanic trenches in the world.
Plastic waste is generated on land and ultimately the challenge is to prevent the generation of so many tonnes of waste and to intercept the flow of waste from land to sea.
Significant reduction in CO2 emissions Removing plastic trash from the ocean is thus laudable from
Eurofish Magazine 2 / 2017
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