The aim of this report is to provide a comprehensive overview of the blue bioeconomy sector in the European Union. By “blue bioeconomy”, it is intended any economic activity associated with the use of renewable aquatic biological resources to make products. Examples of such products include novel foods and food additives, animal feeds, nutraceuticals, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, materials (e.g. clothes and construction materials) and energy. Businesses that grow the raw materials for these products, that extract, refine, process and transform the biological compounds, as well as those developing the required technologies and equipment all form part of the blue bioeconomy. To avoid overlap in analysis of other maritime economic sectors, the Study considers that typical aquaculture and fisheries, where the fish or shellfish are caught or produced for human consumption, is excluded from the analysis. These sectors are already subject to several analysis and reports as standalone sectors, and are already monitored by EUMOFA as part of its ordinary activities. However, there are two exceptional cases: fish waste (the part not used for human consumption), which is not discarded but used as an input to other products (e.g. fish meal/fish oil), and algae (both macroalgae and microalgae). Although macroalgae can be considered as traditional aquaculture, they are closely integrated with the bioeconomy as intended in this Study, and furthermore they are often omitted from consideration in analysis of the aquaculture sector. Hence, algae are considered in this analysis, with a distinction between algae for direct human consumption and algae for processing in to other products/sectors. |
