With sustainability at the core: This is Norilia’s strategy

Our core mission

In 2023, Norilia has prepared a new, broader and even more forward-looking strategy. We will work in a targeted manner to promote our lowest-value products up the value pyramid, and we will find new applications and markets for them.

“Making the most of our resources is good sustainability in and of itself, but now we are going to take it to a new level,” explains Morten Sollerud, CEO of Norilia.

The new strategy focuses on how Norilia can further improve, strengthen the safety of our products, and create even more effective added value. We will build our competitive advantage on what we are good at. Although we are small in a global context, we are a major player in small niches in the international market.

Nevertheless, in our eagerness to maximise resource utilisation, we must ensure that our impact on the value chain is as low as possible. After all, we are a responsible supplier, and we care about people and animals.

Sustainability in our DNA

Right from the start, we have focused on contributing to profitable and sustainable agriculture. You could certainly say that sustainability is in our DNA. In our new strategy, we take an even broader view of our responsibility for the environment and society.

“Norilia will continue to contribute to profitable and sustainable agriculture,” affirms Sollerud.

“We will do this by utilising all the resources we have to create new value. We will create products that the world both wants and benefits from,” he continues.

Responsible production

“Responsible production also involves ensuring the quality of our products,” says Sollerud. “High quality is absolutely vital for us and we constantly work hard to find new ways of securing such quality.”

Everything we do will be measured, documented and reported in accordance with the international GRI Standards.

To generate the greatest possible value from our plus-products, we are researching how we can adopt new bioprocesses to refine low-value raw materials.

Ensuring safe and healthy ingredients and products

In Norway, we produce what may be the world’s purest and safest food. As a result, we have access to raw materials of unique quality. This makes it possible for us to produce safe and healthy products that are in demand in well-paying niche markets around the world.

“Product origin is important,” explains Sollerud. “In many ways, it is a guarantee of what a product is – or is not. So we want to be open and maintain good control of the whole value chain.”

At Norilia, we coordinate tracking and data capture from farm to end customer, making it possible to follow our products’ journey throughout the value chain.

Care for people and animals

It is important to us that we take care of our people – our employees are the very backbone of Norilia. Therefore, we will ensure that we continue to be an attractive workplace for them.

We will also exercise care for the animals. Norway has a long tradition of good animal welfare, and regulations that set strict requirements. We have a cold climate, and our farms are small and widely spread. As a result, our animals are less exposed to infectious diseases and have good health. Antibiotics are never used preventively, but only to treat disease. For this reason, the use of antibiotics in Norwegian farms is the lowest in Europe, and among the lowest in the world.

In other words, care for people and animals is absolutely essential for us. After all, when our employees thrive and our animals are healthy, our products will be better.

Close collaboration with others

Collaboration and innovation are at the heart of how we work. For example, research environments and industrial partners are essential for us if we are to find the solutions of the future and the products for tomorrow’s consumers.

For this reason, we are often on the lookout for new strategic partners who can provide the expertise, infrastructure and resources we need to reach our goals.

The road to our goal

We can see that our products and ingredients have the potential to meet many of the challenges of the future, in both health and the environment. For example, are we working together with Biovotec which are developing products that can reduce the time it takes for complex wounds to heal. We are particularly focusing on increased valuation of our products. We are also looking into developing alternative protein sources and dietary supplements that can meet increasing demands for protein.

The challenges we know we face are a great driving force for our innovation. In order to invest in the future, therefore, we have established Bioco and Revetal, which use bioprocesses and new technologies to refine residual materials.

To achieve our ambitions, we need to work systematically. In this way, we will demonstrate our position as a leading Nordic player in the best possible utilisation of residual materials from the meat and egg industry.