Ensuring seafood products meet mercury safety regulations with a direct mercury analysis technique

Aquagro is a Chilean-based company specialized in exporting seafood products like fresh swordfish to Europe from the South Pacific. Its primary goal is to deliver a superior service that provides its clients with complete comfort regarding the quality and safety of their seafood products. At Aquagro, 100% of the fish is inspected for mercury levels in order to meet all European consumer-safety regulations.
The Aquagro team is made up of four dedicated and skilled analysts.

Aquagro is capable of sampling about 6,500 samples every month. Its testing lab was experiencing difficulties with handling large number of samples and rush deliveries that needed to be processed every day to ensure quality and compliance with European legal requirements and regulations. After evaluating many instruments, the Milestone DMA-80 evo direct mercury analyzer was the clear choice to meet Aquagro’s significant throughput needs.

“We evaluated three different options, and after considering the advantages and disadvantages of each one, we chose the DMA-80 evo because it met all of our requirements for service, throughput and price.” The DMA-80 evo has proven to be very accurate and capable of bearing heavy workloads, approximately 6,500 samples per month -virtually around the clock. Speed is critical for Aquagro and the direct mercury analyzer allows samples to be analyzed without any pre-treatment or chemical additions, in as little as 6 minutes per sample. The operating cost for the system is also considerably low, as it does not require reagents in order to run the samples. Aquagro installed its first DMA-80 evo unit in 2019. The company has experienced a very rapid growth of its business, and therefore planned to add a second system that is now helping their processes since 2021. “It is fundamental for our laboratory to sustain our productivity. Quality assurance and consumer safety are important ingredients for our success.”