Through simple on-site processing, Hailia's technology transforms typically discarded parts of the fish into a nutritious, ready-to-use food item.
Photo: Laura Riihela / Hailia.
European consumers are increasingly ready to incorporate foods made from seafood processing byproducts into their daily diets. This is according to the results of a new survey conducted by Consumer Compass for Nordic seafood technology company Hailia last March.
The study, conducted over a period of 14 days, interviewed a total of 1,512 people from the UK, Sweden, and Germany about their attitudes towards food products made from seafood filleting sidestreams, showing that 74% of respondents have a positive or neutral attitude towards consuming this type of food.
Long considered a key barrier, consumer acceptance can not only cease to limit the wider use of these byproducts but also open up new growth opportunities for seafood processors and food manufacturers to turn underutilized raw materials into scalable, value-added products.
According to the survey results, within the more than 1,500 people surveyed, positive attitudes were more common among younger age groups, especially those between 18 and 34 years old. Specifically, the greatest support for the consumption of sidestream products was observed in urban consumers aged 24 to 34 with a high level of education.
Likewise, it showed that these products are well-positioned to enter mainstream formats such as prepared meals, workplace catering, and fast food. In fact, most respondents with positive opinions indicated that they live in urban areas and cities, where prepared meals are common, and there is a greater openness to trying new foods.
Families with children, people with higher levels of education, those who follow high-protein diets, and environmentally conscious people also showed more positive attitudes toward the use of byproducts in food than other reference groups.
The study also showed that respondents in Sweden and the UK have an attitude toward these products that Hailia, in its report, described as "overwhelmingly positive," with 58% and 55% approval, respectively. The German market, meanwhile, lags slightly behind at 49%. Overall, only 19% of respondents responded negatively to the idea.
Regarding what respondents highlighted as the most important aspects when expressing their satisfaction with these products, while in Sweden the most common open responses focused on greater circularity and an emphasis on climate impact, in the UK consumers were more concerned with practical applications and fish products as a source of protein. Germans, for their part, emphasized innovation, food quality, and process transparency as most important.
Commenting on the survey results, Hailia CEO Michaela Lindström highlighted consumers' commitment to innovation. "We expected that young, urban people would be more receptive to new food products, but we have seen that the answers are not that different between age groups and socioeconomic backgrounds," she said. "The survey shows that overall, people have a positive attitude towards innovative food products, and they see the benefits of trying new things."
Only 19% of respondents reacted negatively to the idea of eating foods made from seafood processing byproducts.
Graphic: Consumer Compass / Hailia.
The Consumer Compass' study for Hailia also included a question about the situations or use cases in which products made from seafood byproducts would be most suitable. As mentioned above, a large proportion of respondents said they could expect to see them in prepared meals, quick-service restaurants, and cafeterias in workplaces or public institutions.
59% of respondents showed a positive attitude towards sidestreams-based products in lunch catering services, compared to only 16% who responded negatively, highlighting strong potential in the institutional and contract catering segments.
Nevertheless, as Hailia's statement pointed out, many consumers also indicated they were open to using these ingredients in home cooking, which, according to the seafood technology company, reinforces their versatility both in consumer-oriented products and in business-to-business ingredient applications.
Among the most common responses, those surveyed said that these products would be a good alternative source of protein, would make it easier to consume fish as part of convenient daily diets, and would bring sustainability and ethical benefits by utilizing a larger part of each fish for human consumption.
However, they also raised some concerns. The main one was the perception that products based on byproducts are over-processed or "artificial." A worry that Hailia's CEO wanted to address.
"We see clear signals that consumers are open to incorporating these products into their daily lives, but transparency is essential to building lasting trust," Michaela Lindström said. "Sidestreams are handled with the same care and quality standards as fillets, and the process itself is simple and familiar: refining, seasoning, forming, cooking. Nothing that wouldn't happen in a professional kitchen."
"When people understand that, the hesitation tends to disappear. A majority are already on board, fewer than one in five are opposed, and the large group in the middle simply needs more familiarity with what these products actually are, and the chance to taste them," she continued.
In its statement, Hailia emphasizes that these products, which consumers now view favorably, are made using standard food preparation techniques rather than complex industrial processes. Its patent-pending technology transforms parts of the fish, typically discarded during filleting, into a nutritious, ready-to-use food item.
When a fish is filleted, typically only 40-50% becomes the product that reaches the consumer's plate. The rest—heads, bones, trimmings, and offcuts, which are perfectly nutritious and safe—is largely discarded, processed into low-value animal feed, or simply wasted. But Hailia's technology makes it possible to transform these into high-value food suitable for human consumption.
Specifically, its system allows this through simple on-site processing, transforming what would otherwise be low-value or wasted material into scalable, high-quality ingredients for conventional food applications, with the taste and texture of cooked fish fillet, without the need for intensive industrial processing.
In fact, the proof of concept of Hailia's technology has been on the shelves of Finnish supermarkets since September 2024, when, in collaboration with the fish supplier Kalavapriikki—with whom it later also signed its first licensing agreement to integrate its technology directly into the rainbow trout farmer's production facility in Kuopio, Finland—and retailer S-Group, it launched its 'pulled rainbow trout'.
With food waste, protein security, and sustainability under increasing regulatory and public scrutiny, the seafood industry—which processes hundreds of millions of tons annually—has a largely untapped resource, and the data from this survey suggests the market is ready to receive it.
As the Nordic seafood technology company highlighted, for seafood processors facing increasing pressure to improve performance, reduce waste and meet sustainability goals, the results of this survey suggest that consumer acceptance may no longer be a key barrier to scaling byproduct-based innovation.
