Aquaculture Dealflow & Notable Reads - 14
Bi-weekly roundup of investments and market movements in aquaculture
Happy Friday fellow readers. These are my pick of news items driving the past two weeks. Wish you all a Merry Christmas!
Headline - 2022 in Review
2022 was a year in turmoil dominated by headlines from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to looming inflation and interest rate hikes. Underlying pricing shifts have redirected supply and demand. Market transitions are expected to trickle well into 2023.
Continued growth of lower-cost aquaculture production in the first half of 2022 was commonly observed until inflation kicked in the second half of the year. Increased cost in fuel, feed and labor continued to squeeze producers’ margin while consumers substituted high value seafood for lower cost items in fear of inflation. After the grotesque price collapse, shrimp producers have temporarily stopped filling their inventories with new products post sale, a trend not seen in years.
Following a chaotic 2022, 2023 is a year for rebuilding. Despite shortfall in 2022, the market have observed increased interest and investment from external investors, e.g. family offices, flowing into aquaculture innovation to seek opportunities in food security, ocean health, aquaculture digitalization and tech integration. Startup pipelines continues to grow with mature startups, e.g. Calysta and eFishery, demonstrating potentials for industry-wide technology integration and market domination. Feed costs will settle down as soy and wheat planted in 2022 to take advantage of high prices post disruption from Ukraine and Russia war will be ready for harvesting in the coming months. As price settles, producers will remain cautious and expect increased political intervention following Norway’s production tax and termination of Cooke’s license in Puget Sound. Innovation is key to the growth of aquaculture, investment into RAS for salmonids and warmwater species, and rapid scaling up of alternative feed ingredients will continue into 2023. Overall, market players will either increase sales volumes and price, or reduce costs and increase efficiency via vertical integration and long-term partnership to mitigate against uncertain market conditions.
For more details, check out the 5 part 2022 in review series published by The Fish Site and the hatchery 2023 outlook by Hatchery Feed & Management.
Investments
🤖 Aquaconnect, Indian shrimp aquatech platform, secures USD 15m in Series A to triple AquaPartners network, led by Lok Capital with participation from Louis Dreyfus Company Ventures, Suneight Investment and existing investors
🪰 Flylab, Thailand-based black soldier fly agritech firm, raises USD 1m in seed and pre-Series A round to scale commercial operations
🐟 Re:Ocean, Sweden’s first commercial large-scale land-based salmon farm, secures SEK 530m from the European Investment Bank to ramp up to full production by 2026
Acquisition
🤖 Imenco, Norwegian aquaculture technology supplier, acquires Vard Group’s (formerly Storvik Aqua) fish farming equipment division Vard Aqua
Movements
Feed
🏭 Believer Meats builds world's largest cell-cultivated proteins facility in North Carolina at 200,000 square feet with full production capacity of 10,000 metric tons
🦠 Bluu Seafood reaches essential milestone to adapt proprietary fish cell lines to grow in suspension without the use of microcarriers or other scaffolds
🦐 Krill meal as functional feed ingredient is key to cost-effective and nutrient-rich shrimp feed formulations, research by Labomar and Aker BioMarine
🪰 Ÿnsect, a world-leader in the production of premium insect-based ingredients, set for US and Mexican expansion via partnership with Ardent Mills (US) and Corporativo Kosmos (Mexico)
🌿 Chinese researchers identify gene in diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum that allow the algae to prevent contamination and boost its nutritional content, ideal as aquaculture and biofuel candidate
Health & Genetics
⛑ FAI Farms launches free to use tilapia welfare app that validate welfare for fish health, behaviour and nutrition. Seeking partners to trial the app.
🍤 The Shrimp Welfare Project and ThinkAqua sign MOU to improve welfare along the supply chain
🦠 Diseases and lice now cost salmon farmers as much as feed: share of feed cost falling but biological costs increased significantly since 2012
😫 Stress hormones could explain rising infections in Norwegian salmon by acting as environmental signals to bacteria to induce proliferation and attachment to host tissue
🤖 Brazilian researchers develop new software that allows breeders of Piaractus mesopotamicus to easily select individuals with desirable traits for offspring production
🧬 Researchers used Norwegian population of farmed cod and wild cod to create the SNP panel, with a total of 21,000 markers, to identify QTLs (Quantitative Trait Loci) and improve cod breeding
🧬 Researchers at the University of New Mexico identify an immune structure in the nasal cavities of rainbow trout, a step towards better aquaculture vaccines
Farming
🕹 Impact-9’s Net9 system, a submersible floating structure supports salmon production in exposed offshore locations, could generate an additional GBP 4.2bn for Scotland’s aquaculture sector
🐟 Gold River Aquafarms, Canadian-based developer of land-based steelhead fish farm, receives an aquaculture permit from Fisheries & Oceans Canada for a CAD 100m land-based facility in Vancouver Island
🐟 Taste of BC submits application to Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans for a USD 35m RAS capable of producing 1,500 tonnes of steelhead a year
🤖 Cermaq stocks 3rd fish cohort in AI-enabled iFarm to leverage machine learning to improve fish health and welfare
💨 The Nature Conservancy lists Forever Oceans, an offshore aquaculture company that raises kanpachi, as a low-carbon aquaculture offering in recent environmental assessment
Company Updates
🍤 ESF Seafood goes 100% solar with Honduran shrimp processing plant by 2024
🥳 Thai Union tops Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) Food Product Index
💰 Thai Union reinvests USD 172.4m to expand seafood operation business in 2023
💰 Urchinomics secures the world's first voluntary blue carbon credit for kelp-bed restoration by removing sea urchins from kelp beds allowing for kelp recovery to sequester carbon dioxide
Notable Reads
Whale Bones (Ep. 1): A Whale Washes Up by Hakai Institute (video 8:03min)
Whale Bones (Ep. 2): Cleaning a Carcass by Hakai Institute (video 10:17min)