Representatives of Scotland’s £1.3 billion seafood industry are laying plans to join global efforts to extract more value for the sector following an Icelandic initiative that has seen the price of fish skins outstrip that of the flesh that is eaten.

Seafood Scotland chief executive Donna Fordyce said the aim is to boost business profitability and overall sustainability by creating new markets for that which currently goes to waste or is used in low-value products such as fishmeal. Following a recent trip to Iceland, where the “100% Fish” movement began emerging about a decade ago, she said the industry group is looking to raise £50,000 to establish a Scottish Ocean Cluster within the next 12 months.

She cited the example of Kerecis, based in Isafjordur in northwest Iceland, which is using fish skin to treat burns and other complex acute and chronic wounds such as diabetic and trauma damage. The company reached £100 million of turnover within 16 years of being set up and was sold last year in a deal valuing the business at $1.3bn (£973m).

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“We have these capabilities,” Ms Fordyce said. “One of the things we will be looking at is mapping that capability but biotech in Scotland is huge, so we just need to do a bit of match-making and a bit of innovation work here around seafood as a product, and getting to understand its value.”

She added: “The cost of fish skins in Iceland is worth more than the actual fish now. There is a higher value on the skins.”

The news comes as Seafood Scotland prepares to co-host the first-ever Responsible Seafood Summit to be held in the UK. The global event will take place over four days later this month in St Andrews, with 500 international industry leaders expected to attend.

“We see ourselves as a custodian of the seas,” Ms Fordyce said. “It’s a very regulated industry, but we want to be doing more and more each time as we progress – that’s important for the long-term sustainability of the industry.

(Image: Contributed) “The industry is not short-sighted enough to say we’ll plunder the seas and worry about the rest tomorrow. Everybody is really passionate about long-term sustainability to ensure a livelihood for the next generations to come.”

Aquaculture directly employs more than 2,500 people across 200-plus active farms throughout Scotland, and a further 10,000 in related activities throughout the country. More than 4,000 fishers were working on Scottish vessels in 2022, with some 113 processors employing an estimated 7,630 people.

About 80% of Scotland’s seafood is sold abroad each year, making it the country’s second-largest export after whisky. Yet despite all these chunky numbers, Ms Fordyce said rising costs and labour shortages mean many individual businesses are operating on thin margins.

“How do we increase the profitability for our seafood companies? That’s the rationale of why we want to do this,” she said.

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“We need to increase profitability and increase resilience. That allows these businesses to invest in the future and create a more sustainable sector.”

Among those already finding commercial uses for what has traditionally been regarded as waste is marine sciences business CuanTec, which makes its Chrystal Chitosan powder from raw shell byproducts from its facility in Glenrothes, north of Edinburgh.

CuanTec secured the first commercial sale of Chitosan last month to an international buyer who is using the powder in advanced wound care applications. Previously burnt or sent to landfill, the raw shells from which it is made are now being upcycled into a valuable ingredient for the biomedical industry.

Chief executive Rupert Maitland-Titterton has said the company is looking to further expand its international client base but with an estimated 184,500 tonnes of waste produced by the Scottish seafood sector each year, Ms Fordyce said there is plenty of scope for widening and enriching that value chain.

(Image: Contributed) “In some cases companies are paying to get that waste lifted, especially the shellfish companies,” she said. “They are not making any money at all on it – it is actually a cost for them to get rid of it.”

The Scottish Ocean Cluster will be based on its Icelandic counterpart but tailored to the needs of the industry in this country, where the 65 species of seafood landed is far more than that of Iceland. Similar adaptations have been successful in a variety of countries around the world such as the US, Australia, Denmark and Namibia.

Ms Fordyce said Seafood Scotland intends to build a strong business case to attract the investment needed to establish the Scottish Ocean Cluster, which will have a physical premises that will likely be based in Aberdeen. The money is expected to come from a combination of government grant funding via various existing development and zero waste initiatives, as well as industry investment.

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Thor Sigfusson, founder and chair of the Iceland Ocean Cluster, has agreed to come to Scotland next year to further promote the initiative which will map out its development plans over the next three years.

“We want investors to be seeing the opportunities and be able to buy into them as they arise,” Ms Fordyce said. “The biotech companies that have maybe never thought of seafood as an ingredient, as a product that they could be utilising – they may be developing other products but never thought that the collagen from seafood is applicable, and the keratin and the gelatine and all of that as well.

“There’s also academia and research. We’re always getting contacted by academics who are applying for funding for research, so how can we all work together to make sure that what they’re looking at is applicable to some of these higher-value products that could be going into the marketplace?”