Grupo Calvo’s Responsible Commitment Objectives received the ninth prize for Best Responsible Practice Awards by the Club of Excellence in Sustainability. The tuna company has defined 17 challenges in three key areas – oceans, environment, and people – as a road map with guidelines to manage its business responsibly. The challenges are expected to be met in 2025. Due to the project’s consolidated results, originality, global nature, implementation difficulties, and consumer education the jury gave it a ‘priority’ rating.

The objectives will be verified by an independent party and published annually. The Spanish tuna company has designed a seal to be used for all its brands (Calvo, Nostromo, and Gomes da Costa) to visualize its commitment to responsibility and sustainability and to bring its initiative closer to the final consumers and make them part of the project.

Despite the sea slime controversy that had put Malta’s aquaculture industry in the spotlight, the sector grew by almost a fifth last year with a total output of EUR 239.2 million (USD 265 million) from the farming of bluefin and closed cycle species. The marketed tonnage of tuna accounted for 89.8 percent of total sales, up 6.3 percent from 2017.

In terms of expenditure, the purchases of live tuna and fingerlings by the industry amounted to EUR 109.9 million (USD 122 million), an increase of 8.7 percent year-on-year. Over the years, bluefin farm operators have been heavily criticized for sea slime problems along Malta’s eastern coastline. 

The work for the new tuna fishing harbor in Tiruvottiyur Kuppam in Chennai, India, is progressing as scheduled. Currently, drivers in the Ennore expressway have been seeing concrete structures (tetrapods) on the shoreline, which will be used to create a sea wall for the tuna harbor. 

Once the new harbor is ready, tuna longliners will have an exclusive platform for selling their catches. Cold storage facilities are also expected to be built to help lend traction for the export of tuna. Currently, all species of fish catches are brought to the harbor in Kasimedu, in Chennai, where they are being auctioned or sold.