Top Copper Maker Wieland Sees End to Escapes, Will Improve Fish Health With Brass Mesh Cages

Sea cage makers and copper producers are on the verge of\r\ndelivering an important disruption to the global aquaculture industry. 

Copper, which prevents biofouling because of its\r\nantimicrobial properties, can be used in aquaculture cage netting and makes sea\r\npens stronger and capable of withstanding hurricanes and typhoons. Copper alloy\r\nmesh could make aquaculture feasible in areas of the world that suffer big\r\nstorms, such as the South China Sea and the Mediterranean. 

German copper materials maker Wieland has slowly bided its\r\ntime with an aquaculture investment, patenting cage mesh technology in 2015,\r\nand acquiring a handful of customers in Australia, China, and Hawaii. The\r\ncompany is in the process of convincing Norway’s salmon farmers to use the\r\ntechnology, said Daniel Steitz, Weiland's head of innovation at BU EX bei\r\nWeiland Group. 

“The aquaculture industry is now facing a situation where it\r\nis going more and more offshore, and we see more and more benefits for our\r\nmaterial,” Steitz told Undercurrent News.  

Wieland’s incursion into sea cages is part of a broader\r\ntrend of innovators from other industries targeting the high-growth aquaculture\r\nindustry, bringing solutions to key pain points. The Ulm, Germany-based company\r\nis the world’s largest maker of copper alloys, producing over 180 materials for\r\nthousands of products.  

Brass is the alloy of copper and zinc and has been used\r\nsince Ancient Greece. Copper, besides being tougher than nylon or polyester\r\nnets, is antimicrobial and prevents biofouling. This prevents the accumulation\r\nof microorganisms, plants, algae, barnacles and mollusks, that tend to\r\naccumulate on traditional nylon netting and limit the flow on water into a\r\ncage. 

Biofouling on nets was deemed as the cause of the Cooke net\r\npen collapse in the Puget Sound in 2017, where 200,000 Atlantic salmon escaped,\r\nallegedly affecting wild salmon river runs. Cooke reportedly hadn’t had time to\r\ncarry out maintenance on the nets since it bought the assets from troubled\r\nIcicle Seafoods the year before. 

Wieland is not alone in looking to apply antimicrobial copper\r\nin aquaculture. The International Copper Institute in South Korea has been\r\nresearching copper cages for several years to develop an aquaculture industry\r\naround the Korean peninsula, said country manager Chris Lee. Prototype cages\r\nhave been tested by STP Donghae, an offshore salmon farmer in South Korea. The\r\nAsian country has ambitions to farm bluefin tuna and the technology will help\r\nthem in that quest, Lee said. 

Copper mesh is a much more expensive component than\r\ntraditional plastic but comes into its own in new submersible pen designs, as\r\nit solves the problem of needing to frequently clean nets. Donghae needs to\r\nsubmerge cages for several weeks during the Korean summer when surface\r\ntemperatures can approach 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit).

Norway does not yet use submersible cages but is a great fit\r\nfor Wieland’s business because local laws require salmon farmers to clean nets\r\nevery 5 to 10 days, Steitz said. This raises an animal welfare issue because\r\nthey can get gill irritation during every cleaning process, he said. Wieland is\r\ngoing to do some testing of its product in the Norwegian market in 2020. 

Increasingly bad weather is putting pressure on aquaculture\r\nfarmers to use stronger cages. Spain's aquaculture farmers lost half of their\r\nentire annual output earlier this year in Storm Gloria and Bakkafrost announced\r\nMarch 8 that it lost millions of fish in a storm on the Faroe Islands. 

Copper alloy netting cannot be fitted on several\r\nconventional cage designs and it disrupts stability, Steitz said. The industry\r\nwill only likely to adopt this technology as they move further offshore and\r\nhave further need to reduce maintenance work and require more robust\r\nspecifications, he said. 

Competition in brass and copper                                                                                        

Wieland will face competition. Italy’s Badinotti, a global\r\nnetting leader and cage-maker installed copper-alloy mesh on its Oceanis range\r\nof cages for an offshore farm in Mexico. 

“Copper nets are mostly used for parasites and it’s also\r\ncommon when you have very heavy problems with the fouling of the net due to the\r\nhigh temperature of the water,” Caprile told Undercurrent. 

Copper netting in warmer waters also eliminates the need for\r\ndouble netting used to stop predators. Badinotti has also come up with a hybrid\r\nsolution, using the filaments of copper to create a net that is lighter and has\r\ntextile flexibility. 

GiliOcean, an Israeli cage maker, sees the combination of\r\nsubmersible cages and copper netting as the two main factors in making cages\r\nescape-proof. The company has tested its offshore cages in waves as high as 11\r\nmeters, using a pioneering design that will be tested by Ocean Era in the Gulf\r\nof Mexico. 

InnovaSea Systems, part of the Cuna del Mar family of\r\ncompanies owned by the billionaire Walton family, will use brass mesh on future\r\niterations of its submersible SeaStation pen. The SeaStation is used by Open\r\nBlue Cobia in offshore Panama, which is located 10 miles out to sea. 

Brass netting “essentially eliminates the risk of having\r\nfarmed fish or predators end up on the wrong side of the net,” Langley Gace, a\r\nsenior vice president at InnovaSea, told Undercurrent. “It also keeps\r\nthe surface of the pen clean, allowing more oxygen rich water to flow through\r\nto the fish to improve their overall health.” 

Serving exacting\r\ncustomers 

One area where Wieland can compete strongly is in its track\r\nrecord of serving demanding customers, Steitz said. The German company supplies\r\nthe automotive industry with copper alloy products, and these have to be made\r\nto exacting standards to avoid corrosion. The sea is one of the most corrosive\r\nenvironments there is, he said.

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“A material that is 100% in seawater conditions needs to be\r\nvery good, needs to have very good corrosion resistance, a certain hardness and\r\ntemperament to withstand all the permanent movement,” he said. “You cannot make\r\nthis without having deep material knowledge and we have more than 100 people in\r\nour research department, only doing material research.” 

Source: Undercurrent News