Lerøy Seafood Group has invested in Brunswick, Maine, U.S.A.-based biotechnology company Salmonics.
Salmonics was founded by Sea Run Holdings Inc. and produces reagents and products from blood harvested from farmed salmon. The company collaborates with aquaculture companies farming salmon and turns the blood – which would normally be a byproduct – into different products used in regenerative medicine, cell proliferation, pain treatment, and other research applications.
The company collects the blood from both farmed Atlantic salmon and farmed trout and then processes it. According to Salmonics, salmon plasma proteins are free of mammalian viruses and prions – a misfolded protein that can cause brain damage and is responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease – and perform as well or better than mammalian or bovine-sourced proteins.
“These superior qualities make Salmonics products ideal for use in a variety of research applications in regenerative medicine, pain studies, and more,” the company said on its website.
Salmonics said Lerøy’s investment will help it continue to grow its biotechnological solutions that utilize fish blood.
The exact terms of the investment are still undisclosed.
“We are excited and pleased to support the work Salmonics has undertaken to advance cutting-edge biotechnological solutions utilizing farmed fish, increasing value, and meeting our sustainable development goals,” Lerøy CEO Henning Beltestad said in a release. “This investment reflects our commitment to innovative solutions that enhance the efficiency and potential of the seafood value chain while delivering positive benefits to healthcare.”
Lerøy announced in April that it has found a use for salmon blood in a product it dubbed SalmoFer, which is an iron ingredient made using the blood of salmon, and that transforming salmon blood into a resource has been a goal for over 20 years.
“To our knowledge, this is the only commercially available iron ingredient from marine raw materials,” Mats Trones, head of Lerøy’s 100% Fish department, said in a release.
Lerøy established its 100% Fish department to fully utilize more salmon byproducts in new ways. The 100% Fish movement has been rapidly gaining attention from both within and outside the seafood sector.
For Lerøy, using more of the fish translates to...
