Norway-based Mowi ASA leads the future of sustainable seafood production

Norwegian company Mowi ASA, one of the world’s largest seafood companies and the top-ranked sustainable protein producer globally, continues to innovate in delivering healthy food by integrating traditional practises with advanced digital operations.

Since its founding in 1964, Mowi has relentlessly pursued excellence in creating a value chain that maximises product quality while minimising costs and enhancing operations. From its modest beginnings, when only a few pioneers farmed their fish, the company has made significant investments in genetics, feed, value-added processing, and smart technology, establishing itself as a global leader.

To support ongoing growth, Mowi has implemented the Mowi 4.0 digital strategy, which focuses on leveraging automation and industrial practises to digitalise and automate the entire value chain—from roe to plate. This approach transforms the analog world beneath the sea into a digitally monitored environment, using cameras, sensors, and a data platform to enhance productivity, reduce costs, and improve sustainability.

We sat down with Jørn Berg, Group IT Director at Mowi, to explore the trends and challenges affecting the industry and company, and how its Mowi 4.0 strategy plays a crucial role in overcoming these obstacles.

Trends impacting the industry

There is a growing consciousness around health, food security, and climate change. As the largest producer of Atlantic salmon, a nutrient-rich, low-carbon food source, it wants to ensure that the 8 million meals of salmon it produces every day are high-quality, healthy, tasty, and sustainable. Mowi is consistently ranked as the most sustainable animal protein producer by the Coller FAIRR Protein Producer Index.

Key challenges impacting the business

Its primary challenge is increasing salmon production in a sustainable and cost-effective way. The Mowi 4.0 digital strategy addresses this by optimising the use of data across its integrated value chain.

How Mowi 4.0 addresses these challenges

Mowi 4.0 centres on intelligent use of data, both internal and external. It employs advanced technologies such as cameras, sensors, the Internet of Things (IoT), image recognition, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and robotics to make its farming, factories, and operations smarter, and connect its value chain digitally all the way to the customer. At its core is a unified data platform—MOWInsight—that supports data-driven decision-making and facilitates the expansion into AI.

The salmon remains at the centre of its attention, but much of the surrounding work is now automated and digitalised. It now has remote operations centres, allowing real-time management of its salmon. This facilitates remote feeding and monitoring of fish growth and welfare.

Monitoring fish health and growth was once done manually through sampling. Now, underwater cameras and sensors, coupled with machine learning, enable the company to continuously monitor the growth and health of the entire population.

Leveraging ERP to adapt

When Mowi began this journey, it operated around 20 different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Its objective was to harmonise processes and have the whole company operating on a single platform. Integrating its value chain into one system is invaluable, and it is now implementing a multi-tenant solution that allows the entire company to access new functionalities more quickly. More importantly, a digital value chain enables it to connect activities in new ways, linking outcomes to specific actions or events, thereby increasing efficiency.

About Mowi

Mowi is the world's largest producer of farm-raised salmon measured by both volume and turnover. It offers seafood products in more than 70 countries, operates in 26 countries, and employs 11,600 people. Mowi is organised into three business areas: feed, farming, and sales and marketing.