AQUAFEED SET FOR 5.2% CAGR GROWTH AS SUSTAINABLE NUTRITION RESHAPES AQUACULTURE

Aquafeed set for 5.2% CAGR growth as sustainable nutrition reshapes aquaculture. Aquafeed has become a very significant industry in food production around the world. According to the recent research conducted by Market Intelo, the current value of the global aquafeed market size in 2025 stood at $72.4 billion, which is estimated to rise up to $95.2 billion by 2034, posting a growth rate of 5.2%. This Industry number hides a much larger story, for the fact of the matter is that it is the feed bag, not the fishing net or even the trawler that has become the largest driver of seafood production on this planet.

For nutritionists, ingredient providers, feed producers, and the aquaculture farmers who depend on these groups, this is not an academic prediction. It tells you what capital, regulatory trends, and technology trends will come together over the coming decade.

The reason why feed, not fish, has become the chokepoint

Aquaculture has entered a new phase. The production from the aquaculture sector has hit an estimated 115 million metric tons in 2025, which accounts for about 51% of the total seafood production on earth. The number of wild fisheries’ production, however, will be relatively stable. Most of the world’s major wild fisheries have been exploited at sustainable limits. As a result, aquaculture, and more specifically aquafeed, will need to meet the rising demands in seafood.

It is important since feed is not an insignificant expense to be incurred when growing fish. Feed forms a majority of the total costs incurred in growing fish, up to 50-60% of the costs, depending on the type of fish being grown. With the increase in the scale of operations of aquaculture due to the rising global population, the feed companies are becoming central to the seafood business.

Asia Pacific continues to reign supreme as the centre of gravity, holding 48.3% of worldwide aquafeed sales revenue, which amounts to approximately $34.9 billion in 2025, owing to the huge amounts of aqua production from China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. Aquaculture production alone from China amounts to about 60 million metric tons of fish and seafood per year.

Europe comes next with a share of 22.4%, comprising mainly Norway, the UK, Scotland, France, Spain, and Greece, where salmon and sea bass farmers need to use very high quality aquafeeds. North America follows with a share of 16.2%, comprising mainly the production of tilapia and catfish in the USA and salmon farming in Canada. Land based RAS provides a unique niche for the aquafeed Industry. Latin America is coming up fast with a share of 8.5%, owing to shrimp farming in Ecuador and Peru. The Middle East and Africa have a small share of 4.6%.

What is really behind the 5.2% growth?

There are a number of factors working together, but none of them seems to be a temporary surge.

Structural protein demand

It is estimated that the global consumption of proteins will be around 475 million metric tons by 2034, of which 155 million metric tons is expected to come from aquaculture alone. The UN FAO estimates that aquaculture will represent 55% of the global fishery production in 2034, implying that efficient feed is not an auxiliary requirement anymore but a necessity, especially for medium-sized economies in Asia and Latin America with fast-growing demand for seafood.

The retreat from fish meal

Fish meal’s share of feed formulations has fallen from roughly 40% a decade ago to around 16.8% today, replaced by soybean meal (28.7% of ingredient share), corn (19.3%), and a fast-growing basket of alternative proteins — insect meal, algae, single-cell and fermentation-derived proteins — that remain a small 3.1% of the industry today but are expanding at roughly 11.4% annually. The overall industry size for alternative protein aquafeeds is forecast to increase from $18.7 billion in 2025 to $31.4 billion in 2034 at a CAGR of 8.2%, which surpasses the overall industry.

Functional and premium formulation

Additives — probiotics, organic trace minerals, immunostimulants, pigmentation agents such as astaxanthin — now make up 18.4% of ingredient value and are growing at close to 7.8% annually, with disease-focused probiotic and immunomodulatory additives expanding even faster, at an estimated 14.2%. Functional feeds targeting disease resistance and product quality can command price premiums of 15-22% over standard formulations, giving manufacturers a clear incentive to move up the value chain rather than compete on tonnage alone.

Processing technology

The demand for extruded feeds, which are valued for their digestibility and water stability properties, is growing at an approximate CAGR of 6.8% – much faster than the growth rate for pellets, which make up the majority of the feed industry in terms of volume share at 64.2%. The ratio of feed conversion has seen a positive increase of 12 to 15% over the last five years due to better digestibility and targeted amino acids.

Species-specific demand

Fish remains the largest species segment at 42.5% of the industry ($30.8 billion in 2025), with salmon alone accounting for close to 28% of fish-farming feed consumption thanks to its premium positioning. But crustaceans — overwhelmingly shrimp — are close behind at 38.3% share and represent the highest value-per-tonne segment, with specialised shrimp formulations commanding 18-25% price premiums due to their complex nutritional and disease-resistance requirements.

The role of regulation has come to the fore

What makes aquafeeds unique from other agri-input segments is that regulation plays a very important role in determining formulation rather than industry access alone. In Europe, feed hygiene and sustainability policies encourage manufacturers to use less fish meal and accelerate the approval of new protein sources. In America, the FDA feed safety regulations determine the compliance level while in China, there have been aquafeed quality standards created owing to the rise of offshore cage farming. Traceability is resulting in huge spending estimates of $1.8 billion a year on testing services and even blockchain.

Certification, too, has been on a similar path, transitioning from a tool for marketing differentiation to being an essential factor in accessing the industry at all. Purchasers lower down the chain have come to demand that any product meet the standards of the ASC or the MSC, and feed producers are meeting the challenge by adopting a certification-based approach to formulation.

National industrial policy is reinforcing the same direction. Government-backed aquaculture programmes across India, the Philippines and parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are pulling smallholder producers — who still rely heavily on unbranded, poorly formulated feed — into commercial supply chains, converting subsistence-level production into a genuine addressable industry for branded aquafeed. China’s ongoing push into offshore cage farming, meanwhile, is generating demand for specialised floating feed formulations that didn’t exist at scale a decade ago.

Trends worth tracking

• RAS is redefining premium demand in developed markets. As land-based salmon, trout and other high-value species production comes online closer to consumers in Europe and North America, feed specifications are tightening and margins for suppliers able to meet them are widening.
• Direct distribution is outgrowing indirect channels. Direct manufacturer-to-producer sales, which already account for 58.1% of global volume, are growing at roughly 5.8% annually versus 4.1% for indirect distribution — a sign that larger-scale operators increasingly want formulation customisation and technical support baked into their supply relationships.
• Consolidation is accelerating. The top five manufacturers — Cargill, Nutreco (through Skretting and Trouw Nutrition), BioMar, Aller Aqua and Charoen Pokphand Foods — now control an estimated 47.3% of global industry revenue. Cargill alone holds roughly 12.8% share, worth close to $9.3 billion, built on vertically integrated sourcing-through-distribution operations spanning every major producing region.

Risks that could slow the curve

The growth story is structurally solid, but not without friction. Commodity price volatility in soybean and corn remains the most immediate threat to margins, particularly for cost-sensitive producers in Asia. Disease pressure — from viral outbreaks in farmed fish to periodic health crises in shrimp production — continues to create episodic demand shocks that ripple through feed orders. And despite the industry’s broader shift away from fish meal, remaining dependence on Peruvian and Chilean supply leaves parts of the sector exposed to El Niño-driven disruption. Climate change itself is a slower-moving but persistent variable, with warming water temperatures already prompting research into adaptive formulations for regions like Northern Europe’s salmon belt.

The bottom line for decision-makers

A 5.2% CAGR doesn’t sound dramatic in isolation, but it describes a market compounding to nearly $95 billion inside a single decade, built on a food system that has structurally run out of room to grow through wild capture. For manufacturers and investors, the clearer signal within the numbers is that volume growth alone won’t determine who wins. The fastest-growing pockets of value — functional additives, alternative proteins, extruded and RAS-specific formulations, certification-backed supply chains — are all premium segments growing faster than the industry itself. In an industry increasingly defined by sustainability credentials and formulation science rather than tonnage, the companies capturing disproportionate value will be those treating feed not as a commodity, but as the technical backbone of the entire aquaculture sector.

Reference: https://marketintelo.com/report/aquafeed-market

Main image: ©Fish Focus