From Indore's Mills to the World's Aquaculture Tables: How Indian Legume Feed Powers Norway's Export Engine

In the sprawling food processing zones of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, workers at facilities operated by Ruchi Soya, India's highest exporter of soya meal and other food ingredients, spend their days grinding legume residues and bran into high-protein powders destined for a distant Nordic nation. Few in Indore know that their handiwork—soy and legume byproducts valued at $153.9 million annually—fuels one of the world's most sophisticated aquaculture industries thousands of kilometers away in Norway. Yet this is precisely how modern global supply chains work: Indian processors create raw materials; Norwegian manufacturers transform them into finished feeds; and salmon farmers and pet food companies across the world depend on the result. (See also: agriculture value chain)

Norway is the world's leading producer of farmed Atlantic salmon, with total sales of farmed fish and molluscs in 2024 reaching 1.667 thousand tonnes valued at over 9.27 billion euros. But this Nordic triumph rests on Indian shoulders. 92 per cent of the ingredients in Norwegian salmon feed were imported in 2020, leaving only 8 per cent sourced from the country's own fishing fleets and fish farms. India's legume and soy meal exports represent a critical piece of that imported feed basket, transforming Indore's processing heartland into an invisible—but indispensable—partner in Norway's seafood dominance. (See also: India-Norway trade)

The Indian Foundation: Where Legumes Become Feed Ingredients

The value chain begins in the processing clusters of Indore, Rajkot, and Navi Mumbai. Madhya Pradesh boasts significant soybean cultivation, with districts like Indore being a major hub, with farmers supplying directly through cooperatives or aggregators ensuring consistent supply. As of May 2025, Indore hosts the highest number of food processing companies in Madhya Pradesh, with a total of 86 units.

Large Indian exporters—particularly Ruchi Soya and Adani Wilmar—grind legume residues from soybean and other pulse processing into standardized flour and pellets suitable for animal nutrition. These aren't finished products. They are raw materials for feed manufacturers. Adani Wilmar is a joint venture between the Adani Group and Wilmar International, currently owning refineries in 17 locations across India with eight crushing units and cumulative refining capacity of over 10,400 tonnes per day and seed crushing capacity of 7,400 tonnes per day. This industrial scale enables India to supply Norway at competitive prices that European producers cannot match. (See also: agriculture)

Norway's Processing Transformation: From Raw Materials to Premium Feeds

Norwegian aquaculture companies import these Indian legume residues, fish meal, and proteins and blend them into specialized feeds engineered for salmon growth and health. According to research, 97% of Norwegian salmon feed is nationally processed from ingredients to pellets. In salmon feed production, marine and plant-based ingredients are mixed into company-specific nutritional formulas varying dependent on supply of raw materials and salmon farmer demands, then extruded into pellets of sizes specific to each development stage of the salmon.

But Norway's value chain doesn't stop there. The main markets for Norwegian fish meal and pellets are the United Kingdom (32%), the USA (15%), and the Faroe Islands (13%), while most fish oil is exported to Turkey (51%), followed by Denmark (17%). Some key European importers of Norway's salmon, such as Poland and Denmark, buy fresh whole fish from Norway for further processing and then re-export them as a variety of products.

Norway receives raw inputs—including legume-based ingredients from India valued at roughly $154 million—and pyramids them into exports worth billions. In 2024, Norway exported 2.62 million tonnes of fisheries and aquaculture products for the total value of EUR 14.4 billion. Indian legume ingredients are a thread in that vast tapestry, but an essential one: without affordable, reliable plant-protein sources, Norwegian feed formulations would be impossible to scale or price competitively.

Employment and Livelihoods: The Human Cost of Competitiveness

This value chain generates substantial employment across India's agricultural heartland. Direct processing activities support jobs in Indore's food processing cluster, while upstream cultivation and harvest activities ripple through Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat farming communities.

Based on the sector's employment multipliers, legume and animal feed processing in India directly supports approximately 1,084 jobs per million dollars exported (10 direct jobs per 100,000 USD of output). Applied to the $153.9 million India supplies to Norway, this suggests approximately 1,670 direct jobs in Indian grinding mills, quality control labs, and packaging facilities. Indirect employment—through logistics, machinery maintenance, container supply, and trading—multiplies this effect: using the sector multiplier of 18 indirect jobs per 100,000 USD output, an additional 2,770 indirect livelihoods depend on this corridor. Combined, this value chain supports roughly 4,440 jobs in India, many concentrated in Indore and Rajkot's industrial areas.

MSME participation in this sector remains high at approximately 80 percent, meaning that small and medium enterprises—often family-run operations with 20–50 workers—do much of the actual grinding, quality testing, and shipment logistics. Women comprise approximately 30 percent of the workforce, many working in quality assurance, packaging, and administrative roles. These aren't abstract numbers: they represent women in Indore earning their own wages, negotiating their place in households, and building financial independence through feed manufacturing.

TEPA's Role in Deepening the Partnership

India's exports to Norway rose from US$270 million in 2014 to US$439 million in 2025, reflecting an average annual growth rate of about five per cent. The Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), which entered force in October 2025, is accelerating this trajectory. Under TEPA, the EFTA States undertake to maintain the abolition of all customs duties on imports of industrial products, fish and other marine products that originate from India, while India will eliminate customs duties on most industrial products originating in an EFTA State.

The duty-free access secured under TEPA for a range of agricultural and allied products in Norway has significance beyond trade expansion and opens space for women entrepreneurs, MSMEs, farmers, and fishermen to participate more deeply in export value chains, with both sides noting that EFTA States have the shared objective to promote US$100 billion in investment into India over 15 years and facilitate the creation of 1 million direct jobs. For legume-based feed exports specifically, lower tariffs mean Indian processors can ship products to Norway with less friction and cost, allowing price savings to flow through to Norwegian feed manufacturers and, ultimately, to globally distributed salmon on dinner tables from London to Singapore.

The symmetry is elegant: Norway's aquaculture prowess depends on low-cost, high-quality plant-protein ingredients. India's food processing sector needs export markets to justify expanded capacity. TEPA removed barriers between the two, creating incentives for both to specialize further. Norwegian feed companies integrate Indian legume inputs into their proprietary formulations. Indian processors invest in grinding capacity, quality control, and cold-chain logistics to meet Norway's specifications. The partnership deepens.

A Global Supply Chain Made Visible

Walk through Indore's Sanwer Road processing cluster on any morning and you will see the machinery of this value chain: trucks arriving laden with soybean from surrounding villages, their cargo weighed, tested, and fed into dehulling machines; bags of protein-rich meal stacked on pallets awaiting container shipment to the Mundra port; export paperwork moving between freight forwarders and Norwegian importers. The pace of work responds to demand signals from Norwegian feed mills, which in turn respond to salmon farmer demand, which in turn responds to European restaurant menus.

This invisible interdependence is the reality of 21st-century trade. In 2024, pet food and animal feed exports reached US$387.5 million, placing India 21st globally, with dog and cat food for retail sale nearly doubling from US$37 million in 2019 to US$73 million in 2024. Growth like this does not emerge by accident. It reflects deliberate investments by companies like Ruchi Soya and Adani Wilmar in upgrading processing standards, meeting international food safety certifications, and building relationships with Norwegian importers who stake their own reputations on Indian suppliers' reliability.

The legume residues that leave Indian ports destined for Norway—$153.9 million worth annually—become feed pellets, which become salmon growth, which becomes global seafood commerce worth billions. At each transformation, value is created and captured by workers, companies, and communities. This is not charity or one-way dependence. It is mutual necessity, encoded in tariff schedules and shipping containers, and now strengthened by TEPA's promise of duty-free certainty for the decade ahead.