In 2022, Finnish food tech company SuperGround launched a unique and innovative food production technology. It enabled them to be the first to solve how the food industry can utilize chicken bones and their nutritional benefits in an unnoticeable way when producing poultry-based foods. Now, the company has done the same for fish. For the first time ever, everything except the guts can be used in producing consumer-familiar fish foods.
Traditionally, after the fish fillets have been separated, the rest of the hard tissues, such as fish bones, skin and scales, usually either go unused as a production side stream, are used as animal feed or as a fertilizer and biofuel raw material. Depending on the fish species, around 20–60% of its net weight could not previously be used as food. The number of these unused parts is especially high with smaller fish species, such as perch. SuperGround’s food production solution now enables the use of these previously unused hard tissues as a sole raw material in food production. It is estimated that around 20–60% more food can be produced this way from fish than previously possible.