Fish & Seafood

Our Approach

Fish stocks around the world are under increasing strain from overfishing. We are committed to the principles of responsibility and sustainability in the sourcing of our own label fish. We have set ourselves the goal of continuously increasing the share of responsibly sourced products in our fish and seafood range. Our goal is to source all our seafood products from responsibly managed fisheries and farms, which have a minimal impact upon the wider marine environment.

Our Actions

Transparency and Traceability

Our business partners need to guarantee complete traceability of all fish and seafood products supplied to ALDI. Among other things, business partners are contractually obliged to provide information on the entire value chain of the relevant product, e.g. on catchment area, fishing methods, fishery improvement project (FIP) or aquaculture improvement project (AIP) participation and other information to support responsible sourcing and continuous improvement.

In order to offer their customers a higher transparency for fish and seafood products, ALDI SOUTH Germany and HOFER have established traceability platforms. With the help of a QR code or a tracking code on the packaging, the respective product can be traced back to its origin. In the case of fish, for example, the customer finds out where the purchased fish was caught and processed.

ALDI SOUTH Germany: Traceability platform	HOFER: Check your product

ALDI UK/IE, ALDI Australia and ALDI US joined the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP) to voluntarily disclose sourcing information on their wild caught seafood products. The ODP is a global platform and reporting framework dedicated to increasing transparency in global seafood supply chains. These ALDI countries will disclose a list of all the fisheries, catch method and environmental impact of its wild caught seafood.

Certification and Standards

We want to provide our customers the highest quality at the best possible price. To do this, we use systems with proven reliability and suitability for market-wide implementation. The use of independent certification schemes when buying fish is one example. By using these certifications, we can ensure that products in our fish and seafood range are sourced in an environmentally friendly and social manner.

Our criteria for the responsible sourcing of fish:

Certification in accordance with one of our recognised standards (Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Organic, GlobalG.A.P., Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) and further by Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) recognised standards)
World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) or Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) rating, shows a low or medium risk
The raw material originates from a fishery participating in a Fishery Improvement Project (FIP), registered on fisheryprogress.org, or Aquaculture Improvement Project (AIP), with proven progress.

Additional criteria for tuna: the business partner is a member of the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) or the fishing vessel is registered within the Proactive Vessel Register (PVR).

Additionally to our criteria for responsible sourcing highlighted above, some of our national organisations have even more ambitious targets that they will aim to reach following a step-wise approach.

Supply Chain

Business Partner Monitoring

In order to be able to monitor compliance with social and environmental standards and continue to foster these together with our suppliers, we have developed and implemented our Social Monitoring Programme. Audits performed by independent experts, such as amfori BSCI or Sedex, are a key component of the programme. These audits must be carried out before production of our goods may commence.

At the end of 2020, the ALDI SOUTH Group is planning to integrate the high-risk commodity group of fish and seafood on processing level into the Social Monitoring Programme.

Resource Efficiency

Supply Chain

Sustainability risk assessment

All fish and seafood products that are not certified undergo a risk assessment to make sure the products do not have a high risk for overfishing or negative impacts on the ecosystem. For this we work together with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership and the WWF.

When we source a product, the risk assessment is conducted before the buying decision is taken. Once a year, our entire fish and seafood product range is assessed by our partnerships, for any products that might have developed a high risk for overfishing. We will either replace it with a more sustainable alternative or define concrete improvement measures together with our business partners.

Human Rights Risk Assessment

In 2018, we comprehensively examined the human rights risks within our food and agriculture supply chains. The aim of these assessments is to identify any adverse impacts our company may have on human rights, gain insights into our actual impacts and understand where our greatest level of influence is throughout the global supply chains of the entire ALDI SOUTH Group.

We identified fish and seafood as a raw material as well as on production facility level with a high risk of human rights violations and consider it to be very important to us in terms of leverage.

Human Rights

Stakeholder Dialogue & Capacity Building

We believe the best way to protect the people and the planet is through joint initiatives and partnerships. For this reason, we engage in various multi-stakeholder initiatives and projects on the ground.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives

Since 2020

Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST)

In 2020, the ALDI SOUTH Group proudly joined the ‘Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability’ (GDST). This is another important step towards improving traceability throughout the fish and seafood supply chain and to fight against illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.

The GDST is an international, business-to-business platform established to advance a unified framework for seafood traceability practices. The initiative brings together a broad spectrum of seafood industry stakeholders from across different parts of the seafood supply chain and civil society experts.

ALDI’s goal is to source all of its seafood products from responsibly managed fisheries and farms, which have a minimal impact upon the wider marine environment. We believe the best way to protect the people and the planet is through joint initiatives and partnerships, like the GDST. We are committed to implement the ‘GDST 1.0 Standards and Guidelines for Interoperable Seafood Traceability Systems’ in our company and will work together with our suppliers for the implementation of the standard in our supply chain.

More about ‘Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability’

Since 2021

Global Tuna Alliance (GTA)

In May 2021, the ALDI SOUTH and ALDI Nord Groups have become partners of the Global Tuna Alliance (GTA). This partnership will support the sustainable development of our supply chains and ensures that the tuna ultimately meets the highest standards of environmental performance and social responsibility.

The Global Tuna Alliance is an independent group of retailers and tuna supply chain companies, who are committed to

realising harvest strategies for tuna fisheries,
avoiding Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated product,
improving traceability as well as environmental sustainability
progressing work on human rights in tuna fisheries,
implementing the objectives laid out in World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Tuna 2020 Traceability Declaration.

More on 'Global Tuna Alliance'

Logo of ODP

ALDI Australia, ALDI UK/IE, ALDI US

Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP)

ALDI UK/IE, ALDI Australia and ALDI US joined the Ocean Disclosure Project (ODP) to voluntarily disclose sourcing information on their wild caught seafood products. The ODP is a global platform and reporting framework dedicated to increasing transparency in global seafood supply chains. These ALDI countries will disclose a list of all the fisheries, catch method and environmental impact of its wild caught seafood.

More information

Logo of STF

Since 2017

Seafood Task Force (STF)

Since 2017, the ALDI SOUTH Group is a member of the Seafood Task Force, a multi-stakeholder initiative seeking to address illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in an effort to address human rights issues and marine conservational problems, which are believed to be closely interlinked.

The Seafood Task Force uses the combined knowledge and experience of its membership to address complex supply chain issues that cannot be solved individually. The aim is to achieve clean seafood supply chains from vessel to retailer through driving oversight and continuous improvement across people, product, process, and policy.

More information

Logo of SFP

Since 2012

Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP)

Since 2012, we have worked in collaboration with the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP), a leading non-governmental organisation. Their focus is to improve the sustainability of wild fisheries as well as aquaculture. The SFP acts as our independent adviser on fish sustainability and rates the sustainability of the fish and seafood used in our own label products and provide recommendations to drive continuous improvement of fisheries. Through our partnership, we can gain better insight into how to source more sustainable seafood products.

More information

Since 2010

WWF Austria (Marine protection)

Since 2010, we are collaborating with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the field of sustainable fishing and aquaculture farming. The WWF acts as an independent adviser on fish sustainability and rates the sustainability of the fish and seafood used in our private label products. The WWF also provides us with recommendations to drive continuous improvement of fisheries and aquacultures.

More information

Since 2020

Aquaculture Technical Committee of the certification scheme GLOBALG.A.P

Credible certification schemes like GLOBALG.A.P. are important tools to drive improvements and bolster our consumers’ trust. GLOBALG.A.P. sets standards for good agricultural and aquaculture practices (G.A.P.) and in May 2020, we followed the invitation to join the Aquaculture Technical Committee, which will enable us to promote improvements through a well-established dialogue with all relevant industry stakeholders.

More about 'Aquaculture Technical Committee'

Project on the ground

Project in Morocco

Fishery improvement project

The project aims to sustainably improve fishery management in order to ensure fishing practices, which comply with the MSC criteria in the long term. In 2014, the ALDI SOUTH Group initiated this project concerning the active improvement of the sustainability of sardine fishing in Morocco.

More: Fishery progress

Our CR Performance (2020)

Our Goal: All products included in our fish and seafood range will be responsibly sourced by the end of 2020.

The goal will be achieved in 2021 by engaging with our suppliers and taking the following steps:

Products will be either discontinued or moved to responsible sources. For this purpose, improvement plans with relevant suppliers have already been set up.
Three long term improvement plans have been put in place to achieve MSC certification for relevant herring, mackerel and zander products.