Marel And MMC First Process: A Partnership Delivering Excellence For Hima

Marel and MMC First Process have formed a partnership to offer the benefits of their combined expertise to our customers. The strategic alliance formed in early 2024 provides a one stop solution from aquaculture through further processing, simplifying the purchasing of solutions including equipment, software and on-going support for customers.

Extending the benefits to Hima in Norway
Hima saw the advantage of this alliance. The Norwegian-based company is a farm-to-consumer operation that supplies premium trout products to a global market. Working with Eyvi, Hima is building the world’s largest land-based trout farm. For 80 years, Norwegian company Eyvi has specialized in land-based fish farming solutions, including RAS (recirculating aquaculture system) and flowthrough systems. For the processing side of their business, in the spring of 2023, Hima chose Marel and MMC First Process, to guide and scope a factory that would provide top-of-the-line processing and meet their sustainability goals now and into the future. Hima’s goals for the facility included animal welfare and processing control to reduce strain on natural resources. "The processing plant at Hima will be an extremely streamlined and efficient factory. It is designed with the singular goal; to conserve the pristine quality of the Hima trout. The team here at Marel is very proud to be chosen as a partner by Hima,” says Hans Marius Martinsen, Industry Sales Manager, Marel.

The full processing plant will be delivered by Marel and MMC First Process. This state-of-the-art facility will utilize Marel’s automatic grading solution, to carefully assess the quality of each fish, grade by size and batching into boxes to meet orders with maximum efficiency. Ice-dosing, weighing and labeling of the boxes will be automatic, offering incredible accuracy and efficiency. It will all be controlled by Marel’s processing software AXIN. The software facilitates customer order fulfilment, final goods inventory and dry goods inventory, as well as quality control management. Accurate process control and full-line traceability are enabled with real-time data collection, monitoring, and collation. MMC First Process will deliver equipment for all pre-processing.

Marel and MMC First Process alliance has ensured a fully integrated system for Hima with minimal difficulty. Stig Morten Skaar, Sales Director of Processing at MMC First Process, underscores the importance of this contract, “The facility has been meticulously designed to ensure gentle handling at each stage of production, delivering ready-gutted trout packaged for further processing. The design has been refined in close collaboration with the customer and Marel to optimize production capacity. Marel’s expertise in packaging, labelling, and traceability showcases our ability to deliver a complete value chain solution.”

An exciting future ahead
Diego Lages, Director of Sales and Marketing at Marel and Lars Erling Krogh, CEO of MMC First Process shared their thoughts, “This partnership is something we’ve worked on for a long time. We are confident that our strategic alliance creates a synergy unmatched by other suppliers. Through the winter and spring, this collaboration has shown real benefits for our customers, and we will continue working closely to advance this industry and secure our customers’ interests.” With the success of our alliance demonstrated we look forward to many exciting future opportunities to building a more sustainable industry by simplifying the process for customers.