An investigation published in April 2024 by the Overseas Development Institute found that “there are discrepancies between official reports and the number of vessels detected” as owned by Nirsa and its subsidiary Delipesca. The Overseas Development Institute Global also highlighted Nirsa’s listing in the Panama Papers, “which reports companies operating in tax havens.”¹

This plant relies partially on unsustainable species. In 2024, a certificate issued by the MarinTrust Improver Programme documented that chub mackerel and frigate tuna were among the fish species processed by the plant.² That same year, chub mackerel was classified as “overexploited” and frigate tuna was listed as being at risk of “overfishing” and “overexploitation” in Ecuadorian waters, according to the Public Aquaculture and Fisheries Research Institute.³ This means that fish were caught faster than they could reproduce, shrinking the population and reducing their capacity to recover to healthy levels.

In 2018, Nirsa joined the Ecuador small pelagics Fishery Improvement Project (FIP), a program that claims to help make participating fisheries more sustainable.⁴ Plants and their parent companies routinely use involvement in FIPs and other such programs to evidence their environmental stewardship, even when participation in them does not result in actual improvement in the health of the relevant fishery. As of 2024, Nirsa remained as part of the Fishery Improvement Project and the MarinTrust Improver Programme, despite the decline of these species in the region.⁵ Subsequently, critics have questioned whether the FIP makes genuine progress toward better fishery management or if it is merely a form of greenwashing.

Negocios Industriales Real S.A. did not respond to a request for comment.⁶