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In May, our Derwent Nutrition team, along with Dibaq Petcare, will participate in the Pet Expo trade fair in Malaysia. We will be able to be in direct contact with professionals and experts of the country, and to present some of our best known food ranges.

Due to the moment of social and economic difficulty that the Community of Castilla y León is going through, a Business Round Table has been created that aims to establish a stable forum of involvement and relationship with the productive environment of Castilla y León.

Our president Carlos Tejedor Lázaro has been invited by the Minister of Economy and Finance of Castile and León to form part of this Business Round Table. So proud of this!

More information HERE.

Each day we fight to reduce hunger not only among people, but also among animals (working to fulfil Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger, established by the United Nations).

As part of this work, so far this year we have donated 4,000kg to ASPROAN and have assisted them in awareness actions. Additionally, we collaborate with other associations, protectors and institutions throughout Spain which work to give vulnerable dogs and cats a better life. We sincerely thank all of these institutions which care for the most disadvantaged animals, seeking to give them the second opportunity that they need. You can participate and donate too!

“Empresa Familiar en las Aulas” is an initiative designed by EFCL and implemented for the first time in Castilla y León during the 2018-2019 academic year. Since then, more than 3,500 students from the Community of Castilla y León, as well as from Navarra, Castilla-La Mancha and Galicia have been able to learn about the values ​​of the family business, as well as its role and relevance in the economy and society.

Once again we have collaborated with this project: our General Manager, Sofía Arévalo, held an online work session with 40 students of the Santa Clara de Cuéllar school to share our work, methodology and experience.

Our president participated in the Business Forum on “The necessary transformation of the Spanish economy: digitisation and sustainability as leverage”, organized by the Spanish Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce of Cantabria together with Secretary of State for Commerce and the Cantabrian Government.

Enjoy his intervention here:

Andrey Koleda, CEO at Priladozhie, has written an article about the aquaculture sector in Russia and his relation with Dibaq Aquaculture. Find out more here!

The industrial aquaculture in Russia has a relatively short history. The first farms, producing rainbow trout appeared in the mid-1990s, mainly in the north-west of the country, in the Karelia region (bordering Finland) which has many deep lakes.

At least a hundred farms of different types and production capacity are operating in Russia these days. We have some small family companies, that are more involved in selling their product to private individuals, at the same time we can find large companies that produce fish on an industrial scale for supermarket chains and processing factories. At the moment, with the market growing, there is room for everyone, and the competition has not yet turned into a battle to the death. According to preliminary data, 36,000 tonnes of trout were produced in the Karelia region in 2020.

Our company Priladozhie, which is located on Lake Ladoga, also in Karelia, was able to reach the level of 1700 tons last year. So we are among the first ten fish farms in the region. Actually, being first of all a family business that has grown quite a lot recently, we have chosen a development strategy that is a bit different from most of the regional companies in the sector. For many, the process is simple – create and sell fresh fish. We chose a different path.

Being located in one of the most touristic parts of north-western Russia, we decided to build a wooden restaurant in Scandinavian style where we serve a wide variety of fish dishes: trout soup with cream and caviar, ravioli with smoked trout, baked fish, etc. At first this was an experiment, but it turned out to be a development strategy.

We made the most of this tourist advantage to promote our product. Last year we also launched our online sales page so that people in Moscow and St. Petersburg could also have access to our trout. Right now we produce about 20 varieties of products: caviar, smoked fish, salted fish, fish ravioli, fish dumplings, minced fish, dried fish and so on. The production has grown and we have been forced to build a new plant with which we plan to process at least 300 tons of trout per year.

It is obvious that with so much production we have to be sure of the quality of the feed we use. For us Dibaq feed is one of the best, because it ensures a fast growth of the fish and has a very good influence on the health and mortality figures throughout the whole feeding period. Besides that, we prefer to use Dibaq before the winter break, preparing the fish to spend a few months without feeding (due to the low water temperatures from November to May).

We are very happy that our friends from Fuentepelayo are constantly improving their product and offering feed with better and better characteristics. The latest example is the AquaSafe feed line, which we hope will be even more effective both in our production and in preserving the environment, which is important for a fish farm of our size. It´s concept of creating an environmentally friendly product is in line with our vision for the development of the aquaculture industry. We must work together to create a natural and healthy product that does not harm nature.

We are proud to confirm that our Derwent Nutrition team continues to grow around the world: it has begun to commercialise pet food in South Korea and fish food in Malaysia. Thank you for the warm welcome we have received in these countries!

We love to take care of our collaborators, but we also work every day to continue growing in the international market.

And we have the great honor to confirm that we have just landed in Gambia to market our pet food in the country.

We are collaborating with experts, professionals and local communities to offer the best nutrition to their animals. Thank you all for your warm welcome.

We have collaborated with the Mozambique Sur Foundation for years to help children in Mozambique, and are very proud of this institution! Even more so now – its project to minimise the effects of drought and the COVID-19 pandemic among the most vulnerable people of the south of Mozambique reached the final of the “Euro Solidario 2021” competition by Ineco, along with projects by Ayuda en Acción and Cooperación Internacional.

After the vote, it came in 2nd place after Ayuda En Acción. Congratulations to the winner, and of course to Mozambique Sur. We will continue fighting with you to improve the situation of the most vulnerable children.

Aquaculture currently plays a very important role as a food source for people, accounting for more than 50% of the world’s total supply of edible fish. Although aquaculture is an activity with a positive impact in many areas and a thousand year-old practice, part of this production is not environmentally sustainable due to large-scale commercial development. At Dibaq, we want to help make the sector increasingly sustainable and environmentally friendly. This is why the aquaculture that Dibaq promotes is not based on the exploitation of marine resources and does not contribute to the degradation of natural habitats. Other factors, such as limited resources and rising energy costs, reflect the need for aquaculture to move towards more sustainable formats. At Derwent, we are already working on this complicated task, but there is still room for improvement, which is why we continue to innovate in the sector.

One of the main contributions to help minimise the impact involves taking production inland with covered recirculating systems. In this sense, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) make it possible to guarantee animal welfare, food safety and proximity to the markets, thus reducing the impact on the environment. Likewise, the development of RAS systems brings social benefits in terms of labour, as it is forcing companies to hire talent from diverse fields, such as marine engineering, renewable energies, the agrifood sector, etc., in addition to allowing the creation of stable, high-quality jobs.

RAS systems represent a disruptive innovation in the sector, allowing production to be brought closer to consumption centres. Our colleagues of Derwent have spent years developing this technology to design systems that require low rates of water renewal, limited use of space, high control of internal factors on the farm, and better use of feed and nutrients.

Feed consumption is an essential factor for sustainability in the aquaculture sector, as it is taken into account when measuring the viability of projects. Therefore, collaboration with animal feed manufacturers plays an important role in helping the sector to evolve. Dibaq belongs to Grupo Tejedor Lázaro, which also includes Derwent, experts in animal nutrition too. By working in close collaboration, it is able to combine the development of recirculating aquaculture systems with the preparation of specific foods for each situation. This helps to achieve more sustainable and environmentally friendly aquaculture.

Obviously, there are still many challenges for the aquaculture sector, which must continue working to streamline administrative processes, ensure proper spatial planning in coordination with other sectors, including energy and tourism, and strengthen competitiveness in the sector. In this regard, the lack of reciprocity in the regulations governing domestic production and that of third countries results in a lack of competitiveness that must be addressed. In any case, all of these issues must be tackled from a standpoint of sustainability and ecology.

Sources: Sustainaqua, MisPeces, FAO, Solunion, Ecologistas en acción