The overarching goal of this research was to collect ephemeral data to inform and investigate the accelerated adoption of new technologies in the seafood industry, such as collaborative robots, in response to both worker and food safety concerns arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The emphmeral data that we collected included an industry overview of production, processing, and market trends; an analysis of online job vacancy data to analyze changes in employer demand for education, experience, and skills for seafood and other food processing over time; a survey that was deployed to over 100 employers covering production and business activity, employment, and technology adoption during the pandemic; in-depth interviews with 20 firms, including those with large capital investments or those indicating that they have adopted new technology recently; and three in-depth case studies including a detailed visualization of plant operations, including the layout, square footage, and number of workers in each processing area.  

Our industry overview revealed that commercial landings decreased in volume by 10% and in dollar value by 15%  between 2019 and 2020. In response, seafood processors pivoted their business activities during the pandemic away from restaurants and towards retail stores and online customers. This necessitated a shift away from fresh towards frozen products that required more packaging.

Our job posting analysis showed that despite fears that automation would displace workers, few firms reduced employment and many see automation as a way to address the labor supply shorted that preceded, and then was accelerated, by the pandemic. This shift towards greater automation has increased the skill requirements for new hires in terms of education, experience, and machinery skills. As a result, wages are rising within the industry and employers hope that automation will provide opportunities for training, growth, and promotion which in turn attract a younger and more diverse workforce.

Our survey found that most businesses did not have industrial robots being operated in their facilities either pre- or post-pandemic and those that did tended to be larger firms. There were no firms that had newly adopted robots during the pandemic, but rather an acceleration in the use of robots by those that had already adopted them pre-pandemic. Among firms that did use robots pre-pandemic, they increased their use of robots between 2019 and 2020. Businesses most likely to consider adopting additional technology were those who had increased capital expenditure between 2019 and 2020. Collaborative robots and AI were the most popular, followed by Apps for e-commerce and Automation. The high cost of new technology was the primary reason for the lack of adoption, but businesses looking to adopt new technology aim to cut their labor costs and gain a competitive advantage within the industry.

Our interviews and case studies discovered that companies had to pivot in several ways in response to COVID which drove their use of technology. Companies that increased their production of frozen products required additional cold storage and new packaging requirements that required the adoption of new technologies to be able to portion and package seafood efficiently to meet demand. Similar to many other sectors, seafood producers adopted automation not to replace workers but because workers are scarce. Larger companies have added automation into their production lines to increase output by producing more with the same or fewer workers. One company even set up their own training program with a local community college to fill gaps in technician and mechanic skilled labor. In general, processors would like to automate more but there are both logistical as well as human challenges that differ somewhat by company size. Full automation was not possible due to the need for flexibility in operations due to the diverse range of products to be processed, even within species, and processors never know what the catch will look like day-to-day. Beyond the cost-benefit calculations there were also more concrete logistical challenges. such as space availability and costly disruption due to switching over lines to different machines for different species that makes automation less productive.

The data collected during this period of unprecedented economic disruption was used to supplement our ongoing research which studies the future of work in seafood processing plants. Understanding the immediate needs of seafood processing plants has helped guide the design and use of collaborative robots as a relatively low-cost and adaptable solution to the constraints imposed by the current crisis that can also address underlying future of work trends prior to the pandemic. Finally, the new knowledge created by this research can also be used to inform how similar systems in agriculture and healthcare, that are potentially undergoing rapid technological change in response to the pandemic, might be re-shaped with the accelerated adoption of new technologies in response to COVID-19.

Last Modified: 10/29/2022
Modified by: Alicia S Modestino