October 1, 2014 — Icelandic firm Codland – a joint venture between fishers and processors Visir and Thorbjorn – is planning a collaborative venture between the country’s top processors to turn cod skins into highly profitable collagen supplement.
Headed up by the daughter of Visir CEO Petur Palsson, Erla Osk Petursdottir, Codland already ships the skins from its parent processors to Spain, where specialist firm Junca turns them into collagen products for the health and cosmetics markets.
“Rather than keep shipping them out, we want to be able to use that material here and bring that value to Iceland,” Petursdottir told Undercurrent News during a visit to Visir’s office in Reykjavik last week, prior to theIceFish exposition.
In order for an Icelandic plant to be financially viable, it would need to be of a capacity approaching 5,000 metric tons – meaning it would need to use the majority of the cod skins from all processing in the country, she said.
“I’ve been out and spoken to some of the big processors like Samherji. I think we’d need perhaps five on board, and then we’d look to buy the skins from the rest of the plants,” said Petursdottir.
Currently collagen products have a small but profitable market at the high end of the health supplements market. A tasteless powder which dissolves into drinks, it apparently prevents skin from aging.
The best-priced market at the moment is Japan, though this can be hard for a new product to enter, she said. The first target for a Codland product will be Europe, and the top rung of consumers who are willing to pay for all-natural skincare.
Codland’s deal with the Spanish company has seen two containers of collagen produced so far, in a partnership which sees the Icelandic firm gain an inside look at the creation of the collagen product, while Junca markets it.
Production had halted in the summer, but should start again in October or November, and cod skin collagen should be on the market by the end of the year, hopes Petursdottir.
“It should be huge for Iceland’s recycling of waste products,” she said. “The traditional value of a 5 kilogram cod was ISK 2,200, for split and salted fillets. With the sort of side-products already in production, that increases by ISK 1,100, and by a further ISK 1,800, we hope, in the future. So the value of each cod should be up significantly.”
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