Circular economy adoption in the aquafeed manufacturing industry

This paper aims to explore the extent to which the Circular Economy (CE) concept has been implemented in the aquafeed manufacturing industry. The issues surrounding this industry are pertinent to the resource inefficiency concerns, involving waste generation from aquatic species; resource scarcity including water, energy and overfishing; and pollution as a result of aquafeed production. Due to the growth in the aquaculture sector, the demand for raw materials increases rapidly, creating a high dependency on resources derived from the marine catchment. Our research found that (1) CE has so far merely been translated into a practical implementation by means of the conversion of food waste and by-products to replace fish meal; (2) the circularity assessment methods in aquafeed industry are lacking; and (3) indicators to measure CE in the aquafeed industry is not apparent in the literature. A conceptual framework has been synthesized to incorporate the theoretical lenses of Natural Resource-Based View (NRBV) and Dynamic Capabilities (DC). The framework describes the relationships that exist across the NRBV, DC and the principles of CE, relevant to the context of the aquafeed manufacturing industry.