The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) announced recently that Canary Islands-based seafood processor and distributor Grupo Unión Martín has become its newest partner.
“We are proud to be helping to maintain the sustainability of our oceans,” Unión Martín CEO Fernando Soriano said in a press release. "Future generations must be able to experience the richness of the world’s oceans, as well as make a living from them, just as we do today.”
Unión Martín is a conglomerate of companies based Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, Spain, specializing in cephalopods, specifically octopus, Saharan squid, and cuttlefish. The squid and octopus sectors have added five new fishery improvement projects (FIPs), the most since the launch of SFP’s Target 75 initiative in June of 2017.
SFP’s Target 75 initiative asks industry stakeholders to support the goal of seeing 75 percent or more of global seafood volumes in key sectors being produced in a manner classified as sustainable or improving toward sustainability by 2020. Unión Martín joins current SFP partners in supporting both the initiative and SFP’s broader mission to engage and catalyze global seafood supply chains in rebuilding depleted fish stocks and reducing the environmental impacts of fishing and fish farming, according to Pedro Ferreiro, SFP’s deputy division director for buyer engagement.
“It is absolutely essential to have the participation of industry leaders like Grupo Unión Martín to help ensure the sustainability of the global seafood industry,” Ferreiro said. “By supporting T75, companies like Unión Martín are playing a critical role in protecting the global marine ecosystem.”
Unión Martín, a key supplier to Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona, was purchased by private equity fund Alantra in April 2018.
