‘Redesign’ Aquaculture for The Future Says Funder

The aquaculture industry needs a ‘complete redesign’ if it\r\nis to meet a global requirement to triple production by 2050 and feed a growing\r\nworld population. That is the thinking behind Aqua-Spark, the Netherlands based\r\naquaculture fund that invests in sustainable growth in the sector.

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Amy Novogratz, speaking on the opening day of the\r\nAquaculture Innovation Europe conference in London yesterday, said the company\r\nshe founded with Mike Velings in 2011 wanted to make sustainable aquaculture\r\nmore mainstream.

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Aqua-Spark selects small to medium businesses on the basis\r\nof their ethical outlook as well as their commercial potential, and every\r\nenterprise in the fund’s portfolio signs a ‘shared values manifesto’, said\r\nNovogratz.

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There are now 17 companies in the Aqua-Spark stable,\r\nincluding six farming operations, three feed ingredients firms, and five\r\ntechnology innovators. Novogratz said the aim was to secure eight new\r\ninvestments a year, with the goal of signing up 60 to 80 companies, with a total\r\nfunding target of 1.3 billion euros, by 2030.

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Aqua-Spark draws its finance from 149 individual investors –\r\nmostly family funds – across 23 countries. Co-investors include Rabobank,\r\nMitsui, Buhler and Cargill. The conference, at the Gloucester Millennium Hotel\r\nfrom September 10-11, also heard from fish farming analyst Christian Nordby, of\r\nKepler Cheuvreux. Speaking about the economics of aquaculture, he said the US\r\nwas still the biggest global market for salmon, and would likely remain so for\r\nthe next five years. But the potential in China was huge and the market in ten\r\nyears could be 400,000 tonnes, equal to that of the current US market.

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Nordby said he had recently visited China and witnessed the\r\nfast expansion of the market – ‘salmon is on the menu everywhere in China now’.\r\nA trade deal struck with Norway in May had seen exports to China increase by 25\r\nper cent, but on the supply side, Nordby said salmon growth would be slower in\r\nthe next few years.

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Biomass growth in Norway is restricted to three per cent a\r\nyear because of the ‘traffic light’ regulation system. Improving productivity\r\ncould boost supply, however, but the last few years had brought lower\r\nproductivity and higher mortalities, which Nordby said was a result mainly of\r\nsea lice.

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The big farmers, he said, were now investing more in post\r\nsmolt operations to improve productivity, and he predicted that this would\r\naccount for the greatest growth in the next few years – more than either\r\noffshore or land based production. ‘Today, farmers prefer to invest in post\r\nsmolt systems than RAS because of a better ROI (return on investment),’ he\r\nsaid.

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The conference, in its third year, invites start-ups,\r\nwhittled down to 13 from a long list of applications, to pitch to investors. On\r\nday one, the first two innovation showcases featured nine entrepreneurs,\r\ncovering alternative feed ingredients, live feed for larvae, an early warning\r\nsystem for toxic algal blooms, data gathering technology aimed at more accurate\r\nsea lice counting, and a one-stop shop, salmon marketing portal.

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Today, the final innovation showcase will highlight\r\ndevelopments in digitalisation, feed from CO2, an artificial intelligence based\r\nfarm app, and a cloud based digital platform to enhance aquaculture operations.\r\nThe presentations will be followed by the announcement of the Audience Award\r\nfor Innovation, chosen by conference delegates.

Source : Fish Farmer