Omega-3 Oils & Concentrates

Long-chain omega-3 fatty acids are the reason marine oils trade at a premium: EPA and DHA sit at the end of a desaturation chain that land plants simply cannot complete, so the deep sea — or a fermenter running Schizochytrium — is the only source. A standard refined fish oil carries about 18% EPA and 12% DHA; pushed through a concentration train, the same triglyceride backbone can yield oils above 90% combined EPA and DHA. In between lies a whole ladder of grades — 30%, 50%, 60%, 70% — each with its own buyers, price logic and handling quirks.

Eata Marisource covers that ladder end to end. We trade and refine fish oils from anchovy, sardine, menhaden, salmon and cod, along with krill, squid and microalgal oils, and we concentrate them into triglyceride, re-esterified triglyceride and ethyl ester forms. Every oil is handled under inert gas from receiving tank to filled drum, stabilised with the antioxidant system your process prefers, and released with a full fatty-acid and oxidation certificate.

Crude to Clean: The Refining Chain

Crude marine oil leaves the press line carrying free fatty acids, phospholipid gums, fish protein residues, pigments and whatever the sea put in the fish. Refining is a sequence, not a single step: hydration degumming drops the phospholipids, alkali neutralisation or physical stripping removes free fatty acids, adsorbent bleaching with earth and activated carbon lifts the pigments and oxidation products, and high-vacuum steam deodorisation strips the volatiles that make oil smell like a harbour at low tide. Winterisation then chills the oil so higher-melting glycerides and waxes crystallise out and filter away, leaving clarity at refrigerator temperature — the property customers actually see.

Each stage trades a little yield for a lot of stability, and the order matters: deodorise too early and you bake oxidation products into the flavour. Our chain is sequenced to protect the polyunsaturates, which are both the value of the oil and its weakest link.

Concentration: Chasing Ninety Percent

Concentration is where marine oils become a technology story. Transesterification with ethanol first converts the triglycerides to ethyl esters; short-path molecular distillation under deep vacuum then exploits the volatility difference between C16–C18 esters and the long-chain omega-3 esters, skimming off the short chains while EPA and DHA stay behind. Urea complexation offers a complementary route, crystallising saturated fatty acids out of solution; supercritical fluid fractionation and enzymatic methods round out the toolbox where heat sensitivity demands it.

Above roughly 70% total omega-3, ethyl esters are the natural product form. Where a triglyceride deliverable is needed, the esters are re-esterified with glycerol to give re-esterified triglyceride (rTG) oils — concentrated content with the native molecular architecture restored.

Oils by Origin: Six Feedstocks, Six Characters

Origin decides far more than price. Species, diet and rendering route set the fatty-acid balance, the minor components and the oxidative starting point.

Algal Oils: EPA and DHA Without the Fish

Fermentation changes the sourcing conversation entirely. Heterotrophic cultures of Schizochytrium produce a DHA-rich oil — typically 28–35% DHA with EPA at roughly half that level — grown on a carbon feedstock in a tank, independent of catch quotas and ocean seasons. Crypthecodinium cohnii pushes DHA purity even further, while phototrophic Nannochloropsis is the EPA specialist of the group. Because the biomass never sees the sea, the oil starts clean of the contaminants that fish oils must be refined around; supercritical CO2 extraction can recover it solvent-free from the dried biomass.

TG, rTG, EE or Phospholipid: Picking the Molecular Form

The same EPA molecule behaves differently depending on what it is attached to, and form selection is usually the first real decision in a project brief.

Oxidation: The Metric That Runs This Business

Nothing loses value faster than rancid omega-3. Hydroperoxides form first and are read as peroxide value; they decompose into aldehydes tracked by the anisidine value; and the industry's single summary number, TOTOX, doubles the peroxide reading and adds the anisidine value. Against the voluntary monograph limits the trade works to — peroxide value 5, anisidine value 20, TOTOX 26 — we release oils well inside the line, because headroom at release is what survives a warehouse summer.

Stabilisation is part of the product, not an afterthought: mixed tocopherols, rosemary extract and ascorbyl palmitate are the usual toolkit, dosed to the oil's starting oxidation state and your downstream process. Packaging does the rest — nitrogen-blanked headspaces, barrier containers, minimal light.

Fingerprints and Honesty Checks

Marine oil is one of the few commodities with a real adulteration problem, so identity work is not optional. Every lot leaves with a gas-chromatographic fatty-acid methyl ester profile that doubles as its fingerprint; where a story needs confirming, we add sterol and unsaponifiable patterns, and NMR-based screening is available for high-stakes contracts. Trace metals, residual solvents and moisture are read on the same certificate, so what arrives at your door is documented oil, not an assurance.

Technical and Industrial Outlets

Nutrition is the loud market; the quiet one is industrial. Fish oil has been a technical raw material for a century, and the outlets are broader than most buyers expect:

• Drying and semi-drying coatings — heat-polymerised and blown fish oils can partly replace linseed oil in paints, varnishes and the protective coatings traditionally applied to wooden hulls.
• Printing inks — heat-bodied and blown oils, plus their sulphated and sulphonated derivatives, serve ink and photogravure formulations.
• Leather fatliquoring — sulphated marine oils remain standard softening agents worked into tanned hide from aqueous emulsion.
• Lubricants and greases — metal-soap greases built on hydrogenated fish-oil fatty acids, and water-emulsified cutting fluids, draw on the same feedstock.
• Soaps, caulk, biofuel — potassium soaps, caulking compounds and transesterified biodiesel round out the demand tail.
• Aquaculture feed — still the largest single outlet, where oil palatability and EPA/DHA delivery drive feed-uptake metrics.

Packs, Ratios and Custom Work

Standard grades leave in nitrogen-flushed steel drums, pails and IBCs; development quantities travel in small aluminium or amber-glass containers with the same headspace protection. Beyond the catalogue, the plant is set up for briefs: an EPA-to-DHA ratio you specify rather than inherit, an antioxidant system matched to your matrix, a winterisation depth tuned to your climate, or a concentrate cut anywhere on the 30–90% ladder. Tell us what the oil has to do in your process and we will build the grade backwards from that — samples go out with the same certificate discipline as commercial lots.

For Research or Industrial Raw Materials, Not For Personal Medical Use!