Market adapted production concepts for fresh and frozen/thawed cod

Due to low profitability, the whitefish industry has had a strong political focus in Norway the past few years. The purpose of QualiFish is to meet the challenges of volume fluctuations and product quality through the development of market adapted product ion concepts and novel technology, with research and innovation at its core. The project goal is to develop necessary knowledge and technology to increase sustainability and profitability of cod production in Norway, enabling actors to meet market demands for safe products with high quality and at sufficient volumes all year round. QualiFish is based on a holistic approach, focusing on the different segments of the value chain and integrating several disciplines such as food quality and safety, product differentiation technology, production logistics, as well as market and economic aspects into one balanced entity. The project will particularly focus on the challenges to provide solutions for gentle and automatic catch handling, novel thawing concepts, differentiation of raw material/products early in the value chain, and efficient production logistics, ensuring high quality, safe food and market driven whitefish production. The technological R&D will be supported by food safety, market and economic studies in the whitefish sector as a whole. To secure efficient transfer of expertise and knowledge to the whole sector including fleet, processing industry, exporters and equipment suppliers, an industry arena consisting of some of the sector's largest companies is established. The knowledge transfer will be ensured by dedicating a separate WP to communication, led by a communication company. To create good communication between industry, community and research, and to achieve rational innovation processes and transfer of research to industrial application, the project has allocated part of its budget to the industry. The project has engaged important national and international competence necessary to reach this goal. The effect of various gillnets and net haulers on quality and catch damage in coastal cod has been examined. It has been a close cooperation with Nordic Wildfish and equipment suppliers regarding the rebuilding of the vessel "Moldnes" and a research cruise has been carried out to look at the effect of live storage of cod and haddock. Through workshop and laboratory trials concept for automatic sorting of live and dead fish has been tested out. It has also been mapped microbial quality and safety of cod on a land plant. Two defrosting trials have been performed that examined the different thawing methods and their effect on quality. There are two approved articles from this work. Detection of various factors for quality degradation in white fish fillets that include blood stains and muscle-splitting/gaping Has it been working with. There is published an article on the recognition of blood stains in whitefish. Layout and logistics on board a vessel has been analyzed, as well as seen the need to increase and optimize the utilization of residual raw material from trawlers and worked with conceptualization of how traceability can be used as a tool for effective resource utilization. A Ph. D has been graduated within the market area. He has looked at the European market acceptance of refreshed fish.

The research areas and results from the QualiFish projects are highly relevant to the Norwegian fish industry, and the technology developed may find applications also in other industries.

Due to low profitability, the whitefish industry has had a strong political focus in Norway the past few years. The purpose of QualiFish is to meet the challenges of volume fluctuations and product quality through the development of market adapted product ion concepts and novel technology, with research and innovation at its core. The project goal is to develop necessary knowledge and technology to increase sustainability and profitability of cod production in Norway, enabling actors to meet market demands for safe products with high quality and at sufficient volumes all year round. QualiFish is based on a holistic approach, focusing on the different segments of the value chain and integrating several disciplines such as food quality and safety, product di fferentiation technology, production logistics, as well as market and economic aspects into one balanced entity. The project will particularly focus on the challenges to provide solutions for gentle and automatic catch handling, novel thawing concepts, di fferentiation of raw material/products early in the value chain, and efficient production logistics, ensuring high quality, safe food and market driven whitefish production. The technological R&D will be supported by food safety, market and economic studi es in the whitefish sector as a whole. To secure efficient transfer of expertise and knowledge to the whole sector including fleet, processing industry, exporters and equipment suppliers, an industry arena consisting of some of the sector's largest compan ies is established. The knowledge transfer will be ensured by dedicating a separate WP to communication, led by a communication company. To create good communication between industry, community and research, and to achieve rational innovation processes an d transfer of research to industrial application, the project has allocated part of its budget to the industry. The project has engaged important national and international competence necessary to reach this goal.