German retail giant Globus connects consumers with “the truth” about Scottish Salmon Company’s featured fresh fish

One year has passed since GlobalG.A.P. launched its consumer label and online portal for fish and seafood from farmed aquaculture, GGN.ORG. In that time, the digital interface has added 31 farm profiles and has been embraced by global retailers including Germany’s Globus. 

As of April, Globus presented the first salmon product on ice bearing the GGN.ORG label to market. The Scottish Salmon Company – the source of the product – is the first salmon company within the U.K. and Scotland to secure GGN licensing, a move made with consumers’ and the business’s most pressing interests in mind, according to Craig Andersen, CEO of the company.

“Consumers demand to know where food comes from and what type of process that was used to get product on the shelves,” Andersen said during a press conference on Wednesday, 26 April at Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global 2017, held in Brussels, Belgium. 

“Provenance and traceability are of increasing importance to consumers and are paramount to our business,” added Andersen in a prepared statement. “Last year, we became the first salmon producer in the U.K. to secure full GGN licensing, which provides even further reassurance of the premium quality of our Scottish salmon to our customers and consumers. By managing every stage of the production process, from broodstock through freshwater and marine farming to harvesting and packaging, as well as sales and marketing, we can ensure complete supply chain integrity, premium quality and full traceability.”

Globus requires that its fresh seafood sources be GlobalG.A.P. certified. The GGN.ORG label, however, takes the retailer’s traceability expectations and engagement capacity to the next level, said Globus seafood buyer Juergen Pauly.  

“The GGN.ORG label and portal offers our consumers an additional source for information,” Pauly said. “Our seafood service team welcomes the additional proof of transparency during talks with consumers at our counters.”

The label, which appears with a QR code alongside The Scottish Salmon Company’s offerings at Globus, ultimately gives consumers what they want: The truth, plain and simple, according to Pauly.

“It’s complex, what we are doing. But consumers don’t have time for complex stories. They want to see the truth, they want to see it simple and in a short time,” he said.

The progress being seen with the GGN.ORG label has been encouraging for GlobalG.A.P., the certifier’s CEO Kristian Moeller said.

“We are very pleased with the first experience and progress of products introduced with the GGN label," Moeller said. "With our market presence in Germany, we are now ready to start our B2C social media activities to support our partners.” 

The GGN.ORG portal provides consumers with a needed space to hear about aquaculture directly from its source, Moeller said.

“Our GGN.org portal for consumers is designed to open a channel of communication from farms directly to consumers,” said Moeller. “We need to find a level of communication that explains those hot topics that are brought forward by NGOs, by other societies. We often leave these communication channels to NGOs when it comes to consumers, and what aquaculture does and what it does not. That’s why we decided as industry, as a partnership, to open this platform and address proactively and early those positive and potentially negative issues for the industry, and give it a perspective."

Products currently out on the market with the GGN label can be found listed at www.ggn.org.

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