Austevoll Seafood

Sustainability strategy
Austevoll Seafood discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Austevoll Seafood demonstrates its commitment to sustainable fishing and aquaculture by providing qualitative and quantitative evidence. It uses environmental criteria in its sourcing and demonstrate an increase in the percentage of its sustainable seafood operations and sourcing, further validating its commitment to sustainability.

No leading practices were identified in the traceability area.

No leading practices were identified in the social responsibility area.

Respect human rights
Austevoll Seafood discloses a policy statement committing to respecting human rights and the fundamental rights at work declared by the ILO in its operations and supply chain. It also indicates it has a human rights grievance mechanism accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely impacted by the company.

Provide and promote decent work
Austevoll Seafood has a publicly available policy statement in which it commits to respecting the health and safety of workers in its operations and supply chain. Additionally, it discloses the proportion of its total direct operations workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements. The company also discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce for each employee category and has 50% women on the board.

Act ethically
Austevoll Seafood has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and includes anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses in its contracts with direct business relationships. It also has a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints regarding bribery and corruption.

Sustainability strategy
Austevoll Seafood discloses certain sustainability objectives and targets. However, the company has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain, including ecosystems, traceability and social issues. Moreover, the company should aim to report consistently across all its targets.

Accountability for sustainability strategy
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover traceability, environmental and social issues. Furthermore, it could disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Stakeholder engagement
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to disclose an overview of the issues raised by each stakeholder group during its stakeholder engagement activities and to describe its process, including frequencies and channels, for engaging with stakeholder groups, beyond its materiality assessment.

Lobbying and advocacy
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to disclose a clear and detailed framework for assessing alignment of its trade associations with its own sustainability targets. Additionally, it can report any (potential) misalignments between these.

Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to disclose a target for sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for its entire portfolio, aiming for 100% sustainability, and report on its progress towards achieving this goal.

Ecosystem impacts of fisheries
Austevoll Seafood provides several examples of activities it undertakes to improve management and impacts of the fisheries it sources from. Austevoll Seafood sources 94.5% of its fisheries seafood products from certified fisheries (including Friend of the Sea (FOS), Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and MarinTrust) and fisheries working towards certification through Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs). Nevertheless, there exists an opportunity for the company to disclose the proportion per certification scheme and the proportion engaged in a FIP.

Ecosystem impacts of aquaculture
Although Austevoll Seafood discloses its forage fish dependency ratio (FFDR) of fish oil and fish meal, its shows that although the FFDR has decreased for fish oil, it has increased in fish meal since 2020. The company can therefore improve its reporting on this area by making it clearer whether it has decreased overall or not. In addition, the company also has an opportunity to report on its use trimmings in aquaculture feeds and set and report on a target for the use of alternative feed ingredients.

Traceability systems and commitments for seafood products and aquaculture feed ingredients
Austevoll Seafood has a general commitment to traceable seafood and marine ingredients. Furthermore, its subsidiary, Leroy Seafood, has implemented a traceability system which uses IBM blockchain technology. This system serves the purpose of tracing and validating the sourcing of seafood products within its portfolio. Despite this, the company has an opportunity to strengthen its commitment by endorsing the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST) standard and setting a time-bound target to implement those standards in all its operations.

Risk-based approach to illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing
Austevoll Seafood discloses that 94.57% of the company’s marine species are certified as sustainable, which helps mitigate illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) risks. Nevertheless, there is an opportunity for Austevoll Seafood to enhance its transparency and accountability by disclosing a comprehensive risk assessment for IUU activities across the entirety of its operations and supply chains.

Disclosure of the source of seafood products and marine feed ingredients
Austevoll Seafood provides an overview of the sources for its seafood products and marine feed ingredients, including details about the species and quantities involved. Nevertheless, there exists a notable opportunity for the company to enhance its reporting by providing more comprehensive information regarding the management status and precise geographic locations of each of its fisheries and sourced products.

Forced Labour
For its operations and supply chain, Austevoll Seafood indicates a prohibition to retain workers’ personal documents or restrict workers’ freedom of movement but could disclose a prohibition to pay recruitment fees. Furthermore, it could indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent any forced labour risks.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some commodities and regions. Also, it could adopt procurement practices and develop supply chain relationships that improve fishers’ income resilience.

Working and living conditions on board fishing vessels
Austevoll Seafood discloses information on working conditions in its operations and value chain. However, the company can improve by ensuring that working and living conditions on vessels in its supply chain are monitored, disclosing monitoring results and demonstrating how risks are mitigated and improvements are implemented, where needed.

Respect human rights
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to describe a comprehensive process for assessing and identifying human rights risks and impacts across all its activities and supply chain, and its salient human rights issues. It could specify what it considers to be salient human rights issues, how relevant factors are considered such as geographical, economic and social factors, and how it acts to prevent, mitigate or remediate its salient human rights issues through a global system.

Provide and promote decent work
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to provide evidence of how it monitors its suppliers’ performance on health and safety standards. Additionally, the company states that it pays a legal wage sufficient to cover basic needs. However, it could specify if it is enough to maintain a decent standard of living for employees and their family, disclose a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage or state that it has achieved paying all workers a living wage. It could also describe how it determines a living wage for the regions where it operates and how it works to support its suppliers in paying a living wage. Furthermore, the company could commit to gender equality and women’s empowerment and disclose related targets and the ratio of the basic salary and remuneration of women to men.

Act ethically
Austevoll Seafood has an opportunity to disclose its processes for identifying and addressing bribery and corruption risks and impacts in specific locations or activities covering its own operations. It could also disclose its approach to lobbying and political engagement beyond in a public policy document and state that it does not make political contributions and divulge its lobbying expenditures.