DECARBONISING SEAFOOD PROCESSING: THE BUILDING-SIDE WINS THAT OFTEN GET MISSED

Decarbonising seafood processing: The building-side wins that often get missed. When the seafood industry talks about cutting emissions, the conversation usually gravitates to the supply chain. Vessel fuel, feed for aquaculture, transport, packaging. All of these matter, and they get plenty of attention. The processing facility itself is often treated as a fixed cost of doing business, even as carbon profiling tools make it clearer than ever where the emissions sit. Yet processing plants are some of the most energy-intensive buildings a seafood business runs, and a closer look at how energy moves through them tends to surface savings hiding in plain sight.

The hidden heat source

Refrigeration is the single biggest energy draw on most seafood processing sites, and a meaningful share of the heat it generates is simply thrown away. Waste heat is typically rejected to the outside air through condensers, while a separate gas boiler is fired up to produce hot water for cleaning and wash-down. The Carbon Trust estimates that up to 20% of refrigeration energy use can be cut through low-cost or no-cost measures, with heat recovery extending that further by displacing gas demand for hot water and space heating. The technology is mature, but it’s regularly missed where plants have grown organically and refrigeration sits in a different capital-expenditure conversation from hot water generation.

HVAC zoning, fabric and lighting

Beyond refrigeration, the way HVAC is zoned across processing halls, packing areas, chillers, offices and welfare spaces matters more than most sites realise. Older facilities often run a single heating and ventilation strategy where four or five should sit side by side, heating, cooling or ventilating spaces that don’t need it. Insulation gaps, ageing roof lights and poorly sealed loading doors push refrigeration and HVAC plants to work harder than they need to. Switching legacy lighting to LED with daylight and presence controls frees up further electrical capacity, while rooftop solar is increasingly viable for sites with large flat roofs and high daytime demand.

Why a coordinated review matters

The risk with building-side measures is treating them as isolated upgrades. Replacing a chiller, fitting LEDs and adding solar one project at a time can leave significant savings on the table, because the interactions between fabric, plant sizing and controls don’t get looked at together. This is where an integrated energy and sustainability review carries real weight.

When specialist M&E consultancies like BSE 3D map these interactions for industrial processors, the sequence matters. Sequencing heat recovery before sizing a new boiler, for example, often changes the demand profile enough that the new plant can be specified smaller, cutting both capex and ongoing gas use.

The wider net-zero picture

Building-side measures don’t replace supply chain action. They’re a practical lever processors can pull directly, often with payback timescales that justify the spend on commercial grounds alone. Seafish identifies on-site renewables and energy efficiency at processing sites as recognised routes towards the UK’s 2050 net-zero target. For processors planning their next capex round, the question is no longer whether to act on the building, but how to sequence it.

Read Fish Focus’ latest seafood processing magazine.

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