(Salmon farm. Credit: Hiddenfjord)Hiddenfjord, an Atlantic salmon producer from the Faroe Islands, became the first company in the aquaculture industry to eliminate the use of air freight shipping. A recent report (2020) from the Norwegian independent research organization, SINTEF, shows that Hiddenfjord’s freight carried by air produced around 50 times (dependent of flight type/distance) more CO2 than transoceanic sea freight. Research from SINTEF shows that the company has already reduced carbon emissions from overseas transportation by 94% as a result of eliminating air freight.
A salmon consumer preference test done by New York-based Consumer Evaluation Center showed there is no significant difference between Hiddenfjord salmon transported by sea and Hiddenfjord salmon transported by air to New York upon arrival.
Hiddenfjord has been working toward this goal for the past decade. Óli Hansen, Sales Director at Hiddenfjord, said, “This has been made possible by systematically reducing the percentage of air freight over a period of the last years. We have a graph showing the decrease from 80% in 2010 to 30% 2018 and finally 10% this year in 2020."
“We also realized that in order to reach markets overseas that were not possible to reach within a certain number of days, we are focusing on frozen products. So, shifting our supply to distant oversea markets to nearby markets — including the east coast of the US — would be the short answer.”
