Sanford’s primary sustainability policy objective is to value and manage our access to and use of natural resources as an asset. We understand natural capital. We believe in transparency and a data-driven evaluation of environmental performance and nature risk.  

Environmental Management System (EMS)

Sanford has maintained ISO 14001 environmental certification across most of its New Zealand operations since 2000. Refer [1] This system ensures that our environmental management processes and resources are effectively and efficiently deployed to protect and preserve the natural environment.

The Marine Environment

Sanford uses different fishing methods, including bottom-trawling. Our trawling footprint is a small proportion of Aotearoa/NZ’s ocean area and does not change significantly year to year. We return to the same fishing grounds annually because they remain abundant. Our vessels are all GPS-tracked and each fishing event is logged. Below is a map showing our bottom-trawling footprint for FY25 in green, New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in blue and areas protected by law from bottom-trawling and dredging in red.

[1] Subsidiaries and mussel powder processing are currently excluded from the scope of this certification.

Protected Species and Accidental By-catch

Accidental by-catch of mammals and birds is an unfortunate consequence of the fishing industry. We promote awareness among our crew, deploy mitigations, and work to improve our systems and methods to reduce interactions with non-target and protected species.

Together with the wider New Zealand seafood industry, we maintain operational procedures across our vessels. These extend beyond the already comprehensive legislation around managing unwanted interactions with other animals.

  • We disclose to MPI every animal that we have caught accidentally while fishing, as required by law. We analyse this data to understand if there is an underlying issue contributing to accidental by-catch and follow up on this.
  • Any fish that we catch that is covered by the QMS (which covers most species) must be disclosed to MPI and counts towards our catch entitlement. We can’t just throw them back (dead or alive) if we don’t want them.
  • Fishers in New Zealand are subject to the Animal Welfare Act which makes the intentional harm of wild animals (including fish) a crime.
  • We release every wild animal (generally sealions and sharks) that enters our salmon pens. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this happens frequently.

Emissions

Fishing is considered part of the ‘hard-to-abate’ marine sector and will be reliant on liquid fossil fuel for some time yet. Sanford advocates for government policy to support the development of viable markets for low-emissions liquid fuel. We are in the fishing business, not the energy business, but as a customer we support the development of a pathway to green marine fuels.

We have a target to reduce our emissions intensity (the amount of CO2-e per kg of harvest) by 5% in FY30 from our FY20 base year. It is a modest target which reflects the magnitude of our challenge.

Strategically we are looking into how we continue to produce high quality seafood in a net-zero future and aquaculture presents many opportunities to do this.

Water

Water is an important resource that is used in all of our operations because we are processing food. We continually ensure that it is being used as efficiently as possible, whether for making ice or cleaning, cooling compressors or cooling opened mussels.

We also need to be careful with what we are discharging back to the waste water system and environment. When we do this, we must have a consent and this is monitored.

Seafood production is the lowest user of water of all primary food production because there is no need to for irrigation like there is on land.

Waste

Most of our production has a low level of organic/bio waste because we utilise most the fish we process. Whether this be for fishmeal, fish oil or fertilizer.

Our two most significant waste issues are mussel shells and plastics. We are currently working on repurposing streams for our mussel shells. We have previously undertaken significant work trying to find alternatives to polystyrene chiller boxes. This has been unsuccessful to date because the safety and quality of the food contained in them must be a priority. We will continue to seek low-impact alternatives and are mindful of proposed regulatory changes to plastic waste.

Use of the marine area

We believe increased food production (and possibly carbon sequestration) in the marine area is a key pillar to a sustainable future. We seek policy from Government to further support the National Aquaculture Strategy so we can achieve this.

Innovation

We continue to look for new ways to operate more efficiently. Sanford is an investor and shareholder in Precision Seafood Harvesting (PSH), an innovative programme that involves the use of new harvesting technology that may contribute to more sustainable inshore fishing practices.

For more information on these topics see our  latest Sustainability Report

Protected Species and Incidental Catch

Accidental by-catch is an unfortunate consequence of our industry, and we are very serious about reducing our impact as much as possible. We constantly promote awareness, deploy mitigations, and work to improve our systems and methods to reduce interactions with non-target and protected species. Together with the wider New Zealand seafood industry, we maintain operational procedures across our vessels that extend beyond the already extensive government regulations to reduce unwanted interactions.

SLEDs
SLEDs are solid stainless steel grids inserted into the trawl net that allow sea lions to escape unharmed when they encounter the grid. Scientific observations have proved that SLEDs direct the majority of sea lions out of the net, the small number of sea lions that are still caught are recorded as protected species by-catch.

​Collaborating on Endangered Species​

Sanford has a long history of working with other organisations on the management and protection of our oceans and protected indigenous ocean species.

Māui dolphin

Māui dolphin is the world’s rarest and smallest marine dolphin. They are only found off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island in relatively shallow waters.

The population is so dangerously low that the species is on the brink of extinction. The last survey estimated that there are less than 63 dolphins over the age of one year.

Sanford and Moana New Zealand want to see a future where the Māui dolphin population rebounds and expands. Together, and with the Government and WWF, we have supported the Māui63 programme to develop a fixed wing drone with on-board AI to detect, count, and record data on Maui dolphin and their habitat. This data will contribute toward improving the scientific understanding of these dolphins and their habitat. We have a responsibility to do everything possible to further reduce fishing-related threats to their survival.

Black Petrel Seabird and Fisher Working Group

Each spring the Black Petrel (tāiko) returns home to breed on Great Barrier and Little Barrier Islands in the Hauraki Gulf. In 2014, the Ministry for Primary Industries ‘National Plan of Action for Seabird’ identified Black Petrel as the seabird most at risk from fishing activity.

In response, Southern Seabird Solutions invited Sanford to take part in a collaborative working group of commercial and recreational fishers, charter fishing companies, environmental groups, government agencies, local bodies and iwi. This group has challenged itself to implement best practice seabird mitigation measures, to achieve continuous improvement in the reduction of Black Petrel fishing related mortalities.

Sanford is committed to helping ensure the survival of the Black Petrel and we have a range of initiatives to make sure all our fishers are seabird-smart on the water. Our fishers are proud to be a part of this group and we believe that this kind of stakeholder collaboration could result in the successful management of other key protected species.

Sanford has a proven history of environmental leadership across its operations in New Zealand including:

  • Maintaining ISO 14001 environmental certification across its New Zealand operations since 2000
  • Leading with transparent data, targets, and results by publicly reporting on our environmental, social, and economic performance using best practice sustainability reporting standards (Global Reporting Initiative)
  • Actively engaging with the New Zealand Government Primary Growth Partnership to develop a new wildfish harvesting technology, Precision Seafood Harvesting, that will allow more precise catches and allow fish to be landed fresher and in better condition
  • Working collaboratively with marine restoration groups such as the Mussel Reef Restoration trust to restore lost natural mussel reef ecosystems in the Hauraki Gulf and Marlborough Sounds
  • Reducing our waste to landfill volume by over 50% between 2020 and 2023

Shark Policy

In response to global concern associated with shark finning, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has made it illegal (from 1 October 2014) for a commercial fisher to remove the fins from any shark and discard the trunk at sea.

Sanford’s Shark Policy requires all our vessels and fishers and fishing companies that we do business with to maintain full legal compliance. New Zealand shark stocks are among the best managed and well-studied in the world. New Zealand manages commercial catches of 11 shark species in the Quota Management System, which sets catch limits based on stock assessments, monitoring at sea and long term sustainability targets. Additionally, we always uphold animal welfare legislation and do not condone cruel practices such as live finning under any circumstances.

Zero Fish Waste

Sanford maintains an approach that no part of the harvest should be wasted. This means that we place effort, energy, and investment into innovating, scaling and commercialising beneficial and high value uses for marine trimmings. This has resulted in our promoting of sales channels for fish heads and trimmings for popular species, developing new products, nutraceuticals, fertilisers, pet-foods, fishmeal, and fish oil production.

Sustainability Reporting

Sanford are committed to transparency in our sustainability approach, targets, metrics and progress. This is done by utilising global best practice reporting standards issued by the Global Reporting Initiative. Sanford’s integrated reporting efforts have been regularly recognised as award winners at the Australasian Reporting Awards (ARA), as well as by CPA (Chartered Practicing Accountants) Australia at their integrated reporting awards.

Recently, New Zealand became the first jurisdiction to mandate large listed companies and financial institutions to disclose climate related processes and progress in connection with governance, strategy, risks, and metrics. It’s a significant undertaking to perform the scope and scale of work required to meet the disclosure requirements. Our Sanford team got together back in 2022 to put into action a work-plan which resulted in Sanford preparing an aligned disclosure one full year ahead of its mandatory timeline. If you would like to know what risks and opportunities Climate Change presents to Sanford’s business and what we plan to do about them, see our latest Annual Report