April 2014

Anova LLC sustainability and marketing advisor, Mark MacPherson presented at the MSC conference on developing world fisheries in Bali, this April 15. The aim of the developing world conference is to highlight the difficulties found in developing world fisheries towards certification and consequently to initiate systems and tools to support these fisheries towards certification.

Mark presented the situation from the point of view of industry, specifically related to funding of FIPs and the movement towards certification. The cost of sustainability is high with the need to cover costs related to pre-assessments, FIP activities and full assessment as well as many hidden costs such as building stakeholder relations and internal capacity building.

“I have seen the requirements by the buyers change over the years; 5 years ago fish needed to be of high quality, safe and available at a competitive price, now more variables have been added. A tuna product should be safe, high quality, competitively priced, from a sustainable source and most importantly have traceability to prove all of these points. The requirements by the buyers have become higher but the price is not necessarily higher”. Hence we see companies such as Anova absorbing the increasing costs of sustainability in the current situation. “The return on this investment is seen as the protection of the resource for future generations as well as maintaining current business relationships and opening up new markets”.

Check out the summary video of the conference here!