Regional restructuring in the Norwegian seafood industry: Coupling green and digital transitions in local SMEs

Green and digital transformations are today considered pivotal for supporting more efficient economic regional restructuring towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Yet our understanding of how regional industrial specializations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) interact with these interconnected transformations remains limited. Also lacking is knowledge on the role that regional stakeholders and institutions play, and can play, in supporting a twin transition perspective that may favour a better post-pandemic recovery. This chapter elucidates how green and digital interconnections are currently addressed. The seafood industry is a significant part of the food system, with the ambition to supply more of the protein needed in the future. Geographical characteristics and climatic factors have made fish and seafood a major industry along the Norwegian coast, which is now the world’s second largest exporter of fish and seafood. Although sustainable practices are widespread among companies in the North-western regions; however, digital investments in SMEs do not appear to be sufficiently advanced. This chapter applies insights from a survey and interviews conducted with seafood production firms in Norway’s North-western regions. The goal is to understand the progress of green and digital transitions and identify the role that the surrounding regional environment plays in influencing SMEs in this twin transformation. This understanding could potentially support a more effective post-pandemic regional restructuring.