Mowi 4.0

The fourth industrial revolution is upon us. The ongoing trend of using smart technology to automate production and industrial practices offers significant opportunities for Mowi. To leverage these opportunities, we have developed our own Mowi 4.0 strategy to digitalise and automate our value chain from roe to plate.

Mowi 4.0 is our digital strategy set to revolutionise our business and our journey is well underway with technologies such as advanced camera and sensor technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), image recognition, machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, big data and analytics already introduced.

These technologies will have a significant impact on how we operate throughout our integrated value chain – from roe to plate, through:

• Smart Farming
• Smart Operations
• Customer Interaction

Significant progress has been made in Smart Farming and Smart Operations in particular and it is our goal to implement Smart Farming in all operations in Norway by 2025.

Smart Farming

The ongoing implementation of Smart Farming technologies in Mowi Farming is expected to have a positive impact not only on productivity and costs, but also on fish welfare and sustainability. Farming Norway leads the way within “Mowi 4.0 Smart Farming” and by 2025 expects to have completed the roll-out of Smart Farming technologies in its largest farming unit.

By means of advanced imaging technology and intelligent sensors, Mowi will perform real-time monitoring of biomass, digital lice counting, autonomous feeding and tracking of fish welfare.

Remote operation centres will leverage on these technological advances. A wealth of data combined with machine learning and artificial intelligence will enable Mowi to grow fish much more efficiently than today, and in an even more sustainable way. By constantly tracking fish behaviour and fish health, Mowi can be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to acting on biological issues.

Henrik Trengereid is the project manager overseeing the roll out of the sensing and analysis platform to multiple sites in Norway. He comments on the progress:

“With this project Mowi is living up to our vision of Leading the Blue Revolution. We have installed the technology at many sites across the Norwegian coast and are in the process of validating and documenting the anticipated value it will have both for us as farmers and for the fish in our care.”

The organisation strongly believes Industry 4.0 technologies will offer much clearer scale advantages in the seawater phase than what is seen today.

Smart Operations

In Mowi’s downstream operations digitalisation and automation also offer significant opportunities in its more than 30 factories all across the world. Fish processing is in many ways still very labour-intensive and in many cases improvements can be made simply by automation of manual work. However, the availability of advanced scanning technology also opens up for much more efficient production and more sophisticated product differentiation than seen today.

Odd Medhus, Group Manager Product Quality and Processing, explains:

“It’s not just about a photograph to understand the appearance of the fillet, it’s about the diagnostic potential of the technology. This has never been done before in the food industry and it will mean that we can guarantee the quality of our products. This has never been done before in the food industry and it will mean that we can guarantee the quality of our products.”

Customer Interaction

The launch of the MOWI brand shows that Mowi is delivering value-added products directly to the consumer.  One way of connecting with the consumer is to provide transparent and relevant information about the product they are buying. This is done by using QR codes on the product, which pulls up well-presented information about the origin of the fish and other details about its journey from the hatchery to the grocery store.

Similarly, Mowi is in an early stage of sharing important product information using blockchain with strategic customers, such as major European supermarket chains. Batch information and various project details are shared on the customer’s own platforms. In the future this can be expanded to include things like transportation information, temperature measurements from logistics companies etc. ensuring that the necessary level of quality is maintained in each step of the project throughout the value chain.

E-commerce has been growing consistently during the past decade. This is also true for groceries, either through e-commerce platforms of traditional brick-and-mortar players or through dedicated e-commerce grocery shops like Amazon Fresh. Due to Covid-19 impacts, e-commerce growth has been massively accelerated during 2020.

Ola Brattvoll, COO Sales and Marketing, says:

“The MOWI brand has already been selling well in e-commerce in 2020. Out of or 3 top customers, 2 of them are e-commerce.  As of next year, we want to expand further in this channel with existing and new customers.”