2023 - CEO Letter
Austevoll Seafood ASA (AUSS) has for decades focused on building a strong Group
within our core business wild catch, farming, processing, sales and distribution.
Our main portfolio companies are Lerøy Seafood Group ASA (LSG), Austral Group S.A.A. (Austral), FoodCorp Chile S.A. (FC), Br. Birkeland AS (BRBI), Br. Birkeland Farming AS (BFARM), and Pelagia Holding AS (Pelagia).
Our ambition is to be a sustainable business, and do business in a financially, environmentally, and socially responsible manner. AUSS, as an active owner, expects that the Group`s portfolio companies do their business in the same responsible manner and has implemented compliance reporting to closely monitor and follow up the portfolio companies within these areas. During 2023 several of our portfolio companies, and the holding company, have strengthened their teams within the area environmental, social and governance by hiring new and skilled personnel.
We have highlighted four main areas in which our work will be important to succeed in creating long-terms value for employees, shareholders, partners, and the society: “Protect our Ocean”, “Improve
our Climate”, “Empower our People” and “Strengthen our Communities”.
AUSS as a holding company has a relatively limited footprint and our greatest opportunity to produce positive effects and reduce negative impacts is through the portfolio companies. Our main focus as an active owner is to be closely involved in the monitoring and follow-up of the portfolio companies.
The value chain, in the Group’s portfolio companies originate from exploitation of the oceans. Creating lasting values via healthy oceans therefore represents the core of our operations. In our work to produce sustainable marine products, we continuously work on strengthening sustainable fisheries, responsible farming and restrictions of our impact on the marine eco-system.
Our ambition is to be a sustainable business, and do business in a financially, environmentally, and socially responsible manner.
In 2021 the Group`s largest portfolio company, LSG, set and adopted science based climate targets (SBTs) for its operation. In 2022 AUSS initiated a TCFD reporting project for our remaining portfolio companies. This has been an important process to improve our understanding of how climate related issues can affect us, and how we will mitigate expected changes in the future. Due to implementation of the CSRD regulatory framework from 2024 we have postponed the publishing of the report to 2024.
On the 1st of January 2023 the EU taxonomy was introduced in Norwegian legislation, which means that first mandatory reporting will take place from the fiscal year 2023. The EU taxonomy is a European sustainability classification framework. The EU taxonomy`s currently published environmental objectives on climate change mitigation and climate change adaption do not directly apply to the Group`s sector (wild catch and farming). However, we have reviewed the relevant activities and assessed their applicability to our portfolio companies’ business. We will keep focusing on the requirements of the evolving EU taxonomy as we expect future rules to also apply to our portfolio companies’ sector directly.
Our people are our most valuable assets, and health and safety are of paramount importance, and we work to protect both the physical and the psychological safety of our people. We prioritise fostering equal opportunities and harnessing the complete potential of employees’ knowledge and experiences. To achieve this, we are actively enhancing diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Group.
Our guiding principle within taxation is to have a sustainable tax approach and the Group pay tax where value is generated and always respect international and domestic tax rules. As a global Group we conduct cross-border trading and trading between the Norwegian companies which is subject to transfer pricing regulations. We conduct our trading in line with the OECD principles for transfer pricing. In line with the Norwegian tax legislation our Country-by-country tax report are done by the ultimate parent company and filed with the Norwegian tax authority.
As mentioned, the CSRD regulatory framework was implemented from 1st of January 2024. Among others the framework requires a more integrated report for both financial and non-financial information. This will therefore be our last separate Sustainability report, and the information in this report will be part of our annual report from 2024 onward.
We hope you enjoy reading this year’s report and appreciate any feedback from our stakeholders – to help us improve our work to report in a transparent way!
Thank you.
Arne Møgster
CEO
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