Aeon wins MSC's Japan sustainable-seafood award for a third straight year
Japan's largest retailer topped MSC-certified seafood sales again in fiscal 2025, and used the award to put its sustainability claim in front of shoppers at roughly 390 stores this month.
Aeon has won the Marine Stewardship Council's MSC Japan Award for a third consecutive year, the retailer said, after posting the country's largest domestic sales volume of MSC-certified sustainable seafood in fiscal 2025.
The MSC's blue ecolabel — running in Japan since 2006 — certifies that wild-caught seafood comes from a fishery independently verified as sustainably managed. Aeon said it carried 41 certified items spanning 23 species over the year under review, from fresh sashimi cuts and fillets to simmered and fried prepared dishes and pet food.
The retailer marked the award with a three-day campaign, from 11 to 13 September, spotlighting four MSC-certified products — cured pollock roe (tarako and karashi mentaiko), a variety of smelt, and bonito tataki — across roughly 390 stores in the Kanto, Hokuriku-Shinetsu, Tokai, Kinki and Chugoku-Shikoku regions, Aeon said.
This is Aeon's third straight MSC Japan Award since the retail category began, turning a single certification into a recurring claim on the fish counter. For Japan's supermarket and department-store food floors, an MSC label is shifting from a niche shelf tag toward a competitive marker — one that Aeon, as the country's largest retail group, is now positioned to set the pace on while rivals build out a matching seafood-sourcing story of their own.