By-products from Fish Processing: Focus on French Industry

Beyond the technical and technological advances in the conversion of marine by-products into useful products, the economic, social, political and environmental parameters, are to be taken into account to understand why and how bioconversion technologies of fish by-products are applicable. The fish sector is facing several issues such as wild fish stocks reduction while in the same time the cultivate one rises, augmentation of the importations on a global market, consumers behaviors. All those influent parameters affect and complicate the definition of an upgrading strategy for the by-products as they directly depend to the raw material processed. Thanks to some projects addressed this thematic in recent years, several quantitative and qualitative data about by-products availabilities are available. It is time now to propose upgrading strategies and to study their technical and economical feasibilities on different territories. In France, nowadays only two treatment plants are still active for fish by-products processing and they are both located in the northern part of the territory. The comparison of their operation mode allows to identify factors of success or sticking points such as volumes treated, number and proximity of fish processors, qualitative parameters or management. It appears that the optimisation of fish by-products upgrading may depends of many of these factors it is so essential to identify and to study them.