The Fish Meal Industry

Fjell Industries has for decades been involved in high performance machines and process development in the fishmeal industry. Originally the main task for this industry was to extract fat in various forms and qualities, mainly from herring. Often the solids part was discarded or used as soil nutrition.

Today fishmeal is regarded as one of the most nutritional feed ingredients with a high protein content and a rich amino acid profile. Fishmeal and products rendered from fish may be produced in large land based factories and also onboard ships.

Land based factories will typically receive whole fish from fishing vessels and produce fish meal and oil. Other land-based installations will receive offal from filleting factories, especially salmon.

In some cases, often when filleting factories are located far from the nearest fishmeal plant, offal is mixed with acids for conservation. The acid will more or less completely dissolve muscles and tissue and even bones, rendering the fish mass to a liquid soup.(Silage)


This liquid is then heated, fat extracted and the residual non-fat liquid concentrated to a slurry. The same process can also be performed using special enzymes, rendering a higher quality fat.

• Preheaters/Cookers:
  Screw cookers,
  Tubular one tube preheaters,
  Thin film preheaters.
• Presses:
  Twin screw presses,
  Whole fish decanters
• Decanters Centrifuges:
  Horisontal scroll decanters,
  Tricanters,
  Disc centrifuges,
  Disc type polishers.
• Evaporators:
  Multiple effect evaporators, rising film, falling film.,
  MVR evaporators, falling film.,
  Waste heat evaporators (WHE) Rising film and falling film.,
  Finishing evaporators, forced flash units.
• Driers:
  Disc driers
  Hot air driers