English 
Tel:
+86-536-2096656
Email: info@kenonbio.com
Email: info@kenonbio.com
Address:
20th Floor, No. 101 Shenzhen Road, Laoshan District, Qingdao, China.
20th Floor, No. 101 Shenzhen Road, Laoshan District, Qingdao, China.
Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-08-07 Origin: Site
Fishmeal has long been recognized as the premium protein source in aquafeed formulations, valued for its balanced amino acid profile, high nutrient digestibility, and superior palatability. However, constrained by limited wild fishery resources, global fishmeal supply has entered an era of tight balance, with prices climbing sharply in recent years and becoming a major cost driver for the aquafeed sector. Accelerating the development and application of alternative protein sources has emerged as a core technical priority for the global industry.
Against this industry background, two senior experts with global operational experience shared in-depth views on raw material evaluation, formula optimization, functional additive application, and emerging market layout. This paper systematically organizes their technical opinions to provide practical guidance for aquafeed practitioners.
From a raw material assessment perspective, determining whether a new plant protein can effectively replace fishmeal cannot rely solely on crude protein content. The expert with global aquatic technical project experience summarized four core evaluation dimensions:
While crude protein content serves as a basic indicator, the core criterion is the profile of digestible amino acids, particularly whether the ratio of lysine and methionine matches the nutritional requirements of the target cultured species. For example, corn gluten meal boasts high protein content but is deficient in lysine, requiring targeted supplementation in formula design.
Common ANFs in plant-derived proteins include trypsin inhibitors, lectins, glucosinolates, phytic acid, and non-starch polysaccharides (NSPs). Evaluation must also assess whether processing technologies (heat treatment, fermentation, enzymatic hydrolysis) or exogenous enzyme preparations can effectively remove or inactivate these factors.
For instance, fermented soybean meal delivers outstanding performance: the fermentation process eliminates most ANFs while increasing small peptide content, significantly elevating its nutritional value. Rapeseed meal and cottonseed meal feature prominent cost advantages, but glucosinolates and free gossypol must be strictly controlled during application. Insect protein and microbial protein exhibit excellent digestibility and palatability, but their large-scale commercial application is currently limited by production capacity and manufacturing cost.
Key indicators include pellet durability index (PDI), water stability of finished pellets, and oil absorption capacity. These properties directly affect feed waste, breeding efficiency, and water quality in actual farming operations.
This covers stable supply capacity, batch-to-batch quality consistency, and cost per unit of digestible protein. Raw materials with excellent nutritional performance but unstable supply or prohibitive cost cannot be widely adopted in commercial formula systems.
A pervasive challenge in fishmeal replacement is that higher substitution ratios often correlate with declining growth performance of farmed animals. The expert pointed out that the bottleneck usually lies not in total protein content, but in digestion efficiency, palatability, and intestinal health. The optimal solution is not simple isonitrogenous substitution, but a comprehensive technical package:
Blend multiple plant proteins: Leverage amino acid complementarity across different raw materials to optimize the overall amino acid pattern.
Formulate on a digestible amino acid basis: Balance formulations with crystalline amino acids to ensure effective supply of limiting amino acids.
Inactivate anti-nutritional factors: Apply heat treatment, fermentation, enzymatic hydrolysis processes, or exogenous enzyme preparations to mitigate the negative effects of ANFs.
Boost feed intake: Deploy attractants and palatability modifiers to compensate for palatability decline caused by high plant protein inclusion.
Optimize nutrient absorption and organ health: Combine emulsifiers, bile acids and organic acids to improve fat digestion, maintain liver function, and ensure efficient nutrient absorption.
Preserve intestinal barrier integrity: Utilize functional additives to protect intestinal health and reduce the risk of enteritis induced by plant protein.
When implemented synergistically, these measures enable high fishmeal replacement ratios without compromising aquaculture performance.
From a global perspective, fishmeal and fish oil replacement faces three core technical hurdles:
Fish oil replacement is more intractable: Fish oil is rich in long-chain omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids EPA and DHA, which cannot be supplied by vegetable oils. These nutrients directly affect aquatic animal growth, immunity, and the nutritional quality of end products.
Constraints from ANFs and palatability: The challenge is particularly pronounced in carnivorous species and early life stages.
Raw material quality fluctuation: Variability in raw material quality easily leads to unstable formula performance in practice.
In response to these challenges, different regional markets have formed differentiated strategies based on local resource endowments and farming characteristics:
Europe: Focuses on sustainability certification and low-fishmeal formulations, with extensive adoption of enzyme preparations and functional additives.
North America: Prioritizes cost-effectiveness and implements precision formulation based on digestible nutrients.
Southeast Asia: Makes heavy use of local agricultural by-products and low-cost plant proteins, with palatability as the core pain point.
China: With its enormous production volume, the market follows a cost-oriented formula approach, utilizing large volumes of rapeseed meal, cottonseed meal and fermented protein ingredients, and relying on additives to offset raw material quality limitations.
Latin America: Endowed with abundant soybean resources, its formulation system is naturally built on soybean-derived raw materials.
The underlying technical principles are universal, but the available raw material portfolio and cost tolerance vary significantly across regions.
Regarding fat utilization disorders and liver health issues prevalent in low-fishmeal formulas, the expert shared application schemes of emulsifiers and bile acids across global markets based on international product promotion experience.
A universal rule is that as fishmeal and fish oil levels decline in feed, fat digestion and absorption typically become the limiting factor:
Emulsifiers: Promote oil emulsification and improve fat absorption efficiency, delivering prominent value in high-energy feed and low-temperature aquaculture scenarios where fat digestibility drops.
Bile acids: Facilitate lipid emulsification and transport, reduce hepatic fat deposition in animals, and alleviate fatty liver and abnormal bile metabolism commonly associated with high-plant-protein formulas.
European market: Predominantly applied in low-fishmeal salmon and trout feed, with a focus on liver health protection.
Southeast Asian market: In shrimp feed and pangasius feed, emulsifiers and bile acids are mainly added to improve feed conversion rate and control overall costs.
High-density freshwater aquaculture: The core objective is liver protection to reduce mortality in the late farming stage.
It is critical to clarify the functional positioning of additives rather than treating them purely as cost-reduction tools. Optimal efficacy is achieved when used in combination with organic acids and antioxidants.
After joining Kenon, the expert plans to translate international technical experience in plant protein evaluation, anti-nutritional factor control and pellet quality optimization into localized technical services adapted to the Chinese market, with the goal of converting global best practices into implementable, verifiable solutions for customers. The specific implementation paths include:
Build a raw material evaluation system aligned with domestic resources: Instead of taking crude protein as the sole benchmark, focus on evaluating digestible amino acids and screening anti-nutritional factors.
Develop targeted ANF control solutions: Address the widespread use of rapeseed meal, cottonseed meal and fermented meals in domestic formulas by providing supporting anti-nutritional factor management schemes.
Optimize feed pellet processing quality: Collaborate with customers to improve pellet cohesiveness, durability and water stability — indicators that directly impact farm performance and feed waste.
Conduct local animal trials: Jointly carry out breeding trials with domestic feed mills and farms to accumulate local experimental data, which gains higher recognition from customers than overseas literature.
Technical training for customer teams: Deliver continuous technical knowledge empowerment to customers' in-house technical teams.
In short, the strategy is to adopt internationally mature methodologies and complete verification and implementation based on local trial data.
The second expert, with in-depth research on the Latin American market, shared insights into the regional market situation, entry barriers and technical reference value, providing practical guidance for Chinese enterprises planning overseas expansion.
The Latin American aquafeed market maintains a compound annual growth rate of approximately 7%, ranking it among the fastest-growing regional markets globally. The core growth drivers are the expansion of aquatic export industries and the popularization of large-scale farming.
The market is highly concentrated in three countries, which account for over 80% of total aquafeed volume in Latin America:
Ecuador: Approximately 2.5 million tons of Pacific white shrimp (Litopenaeus vannamei) feed.
Brazil: Approximately 1.4 million tons of tilapia feed plus 200,000 tons of Pacific white shrimp feed.
Chile: Dominated by salmon feed.
Chinese enterprises still hold comprehensive technical advantages in Pacific white shrimp and tilapia feed, with market opportunities in larval feed, aquaculture health products, feed additives and aeration equipment.
Security risks: The overall public security environment in Latin American countries is poor, with high incidence of robbery, kidnapping and extortion. The security situation in Ecuador has deteriorated year by year recently, making security guarantee the foremost challenge.
Language barrier: Most Chinese employees have limited English proficiency, while Latin American countries predominantly speak Spanish and Portuguese (Brazil). Senior management requires dedicated translators to ensure operational efficiency.
Geographical distance: Latin America is the farthest region from China, with one-way flights exceeding 30 hours. Combined with time differences and language barriers, business trips impose both physical and psychological burdens.
High investment threshold: A 100,000-ton shrimp feed plant requires approximately USD 45 million in fixed asset investment, significantly higher than in Southeast Asian countries. Small-scale production, by contrast, lacks cost competitiveness.
Compared with China, aquafeed formulations in Latin America are relatively simpler, with a narrower selection of available raw materials. Local staple ingredients are mainly soybean meal, fishmeal and poultry meal, while novel materials such as insect protein meal, enzymatically hydrolyzed corn gluten meal and various functional additives are still rarely used.
In terms of fishmeal replacement, China possesses more extensive practical experience in Pacific white shrimp and tilapia feed formulations. Only Chile's salmon fishmeal replacement scheme is technically superior to China's system.
Competition in China's aquafeed industry is the most intense worldwide. Aquafeed enterprises that remain competitive in the domestic market are fully capable of expanding overseas. The most difficult step is taking the first step across national borders. For enterprises targeting the Latin American market, they should leverage their technical strengths in shrimp and tilapia feed, and optimize cost structure and product performance by integrating local raw material resources.
The continuous rise in fishmeal prices represents both a challenge and an opportunity to drive technological iteration in the global aquafeed industry. Achieving efficient, high-proportion fishmeal replacement requires systematic efforts spanning raw material evaluation, formula optimization, process improvement and functional additive matching. Meanwhile, regional markets worldwide differ markedly in resource endowment, farming structure and technical maturity. Enterprises should combine internationally proven technical experience with local market characteristics to explore differentiated development paths aligned with their own positioning. For Chinese enterprises, while deepening the domestic market, they can also pay attention to fast-growing emerging markets such as Latin America, and export advantageous technologies and products to unlock broader development space.
Dr. Kabir Chowdhury previously served as Global Aquaculture Technical Director at Jefo Nutrition, Canada. He officially took office as Senior Technical Consultant of Qingdao Kenon in February 2026. With rich practical experience in global aquaculture technical programs, he has profound professional accumulation in novel plant protein evaluation, the impacts of anti-nutritional factors on nutrient utilization in aquatic animals, feed pellet quality assessment, and raw material characteristic analysis.
Dr. Liu Ming is a senior industry researcher who has conducted in-depth and systematic research on the current situation, competitive landscape and development prospects of the feed industry in major Latin American countries. He provides forward-looking strategic insights for Chinese feed enterprises exploring emerging overseas markets.