De Heus: empowering farmers towards sustainable aquaculture through high-quality nutrition

Royal De Heus is an international producer of a complete range of compound feed, premixes, concentrates and feed specialties for livestock and aquaculture. With more than 110 years of experience, De Heus supports farmers and dealers in more than 75 countries with nutritional products and farming solutions to ensure maximum animal health and optimal performance. Everyday, we work towards creating better access to safe and healthy food for a growing world population and we do this with the utmost care for climate, environment and animal welfare.

As the global population and average incomes increase, animal proteins are becoming a larger part of the diet. Aquaculture plays an important role in providing healthy protein for the growing population and provides an alternative for proteins originating from oceans, rivers and lakes obtained by wild catch. The responsible use of aquatic resources is key to the global sustainable development of aquaculture.

Many aquaculture products such as tilapia, pangasius, shrimp, snakehead and Asian seabass are consumed globally thanks to their excellent nutrition values, rich tastes and firm textures. To provide consumers with these healthy products there is a lot of work being done by farmers, feed millers, processors and genetic companies as well as other value chain stakeholders. Together they are working hard to achieve better farming results whilst minimizing environmental impact in order to feed the world sustainably.

Royal De Heus is an animal nutrition supplier from the Netherlands, currently led by the 4th generation of the De Heus family. Over more than 110 years, De Heus has been supporting farmers in more than 75 countries to raise healthy animals and produce safe and affordable proteins. For De Heus, as a family-owned business, sustainability means taking responsibility for both the current generation as well as the generations to come. Therefore, the company actively creates solutions for farmers, value chain partners, local communities and the environment within aquaculture. The entrepreneurial spirit of De Heus, which is part of the De Heus DNA, encourages farmers to find opportunities to produce animal proteins in a sustainable and profitable way.

Working closely with independent farmers around the world, De Heus sees the tremendous progress made every day by farmers to further professionalize their operations, use resources more efficiently and subsequently improve the living conditions of their own families and local communities. 

Aqua farms are a key link in the value chain which have specific risks to manage, such as diseases, changing quality of natural resources (e.g. water) as well as climate changes. Therefore, De Heus believes in a complete approach to ensure together we equip the aqua farmers with the right technologies and feed solutions generating a positive impact in the value chain. De Heus constantly supports farmers with access to high-quality nutrition for their fish and shrimp, and furthermore also provides solutions beyond feed such as farm management, genetics supply, access to finance, technology applications and connection to markets. This is “Powering Progress”.

Working shoulder-to-shoulder with farmers delivering pragmatic solutions is a key outcome of the on-the-farm approach De Heus takes. This approach has helped De Heus’s customers, among which many aqua farmers, succeed around the world, delivering the best quality fish and shrimp from Asia and Africa to consumers globally.

In 2020, De Heus introduced ‘Responsible Feeding’, the global sustainability program which is developed around four pillars that cover De Heus’ activities and their position in the food production supply chains in which we operate: Feed for Food, Sustainable Supply Chain, Fostering Communities and Thriving Employees.

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