From commodity recovery to higher-value marine ingredients.
For decades, tuna processors have already found outlets for what remains after primary processing.
🐟 Trimmings and offal → fishmeal
💧 Lipid fractions → fish oil
🌱 Marine ingredients → aquafeed and animal nutrition
That part is established.
What is changing is how far up the value chain companies can move.
According to IFFO – The Marine Ingredients Organisation, fish processing by-products can represent between 30% and 70% of the wet weight of a fish, depending on species and processing method.
And the scale is already significant:
🟦42% of raw material used for marine ingredient production now comes from by-products
🟦34% of global fishmeal production came from by-products in 2024
🟦54% of global fish oil production came from by-products in 2024
For tuna specifically, trimmings and offal are already an important raw material stream for marine ingredients.
But the next opportunity is moving beyond traditional commodity uses.
🧴 SKIN → collagen peptides
🧠 HEADS → DHA-rich oils
🦴 BONES → bio-calcium
🧪 TRIMMINGS → hydrolysates & functional ingredients
💧 COOKING STREAMS → extracts & natural seasonings
The same tuna can now feed very different markets:
💊 Nutraceuticals
🧴 Beauty & cosmetics
🥣 Functional foods
🐾 Pet nutrition
🐟 Aquaculture
And some major seafood groups are already pushing in this direction.
🇹🇭 Thai Union Group PCL. is one of the clearest examples.
Its ingredient portfolio now includes:
🟦 ThalaCol™ — marine collagen peptides from tuna skin
🟦 UniQ®OMEGA — refined tuna DHA oil
🟦 UniQ®BONE — bio-calcium derived from tuna bones
🎯 Thai Union has set a target of at least USD 30 million in revenue for ThalaCol™ within five years, while targeting >50% CAGR in premium Omega-3 sales through 2030.
🇪🇸 JEALSA / Valora Marine Ingredients are pushing the model further:
♻️ Full raw-material utilisation
🧪 Marine biorefinery
💊 Functional ingredients
🐾 Pet food & nutrition applications
🇮🇹 Bolton Food is moving too.
🔬 Its new Food Research & Innovation Center is already studying Fish-Value Valorization — how to turn fish by-products into higher-value derivatives.
The competitive question is no longer whether tuna by-products have value.
They already do.
👉 How much more value can tuna processors extract from every kilogram?
♻️ Circular economy is increasingly becoming more than a sustainability story.
💰 It is becoming a margin strategy.