Aquaculture Dealflow & Notable Reads - 16
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. Enjoy and have a great weekend ahead.
Announcements
💡 Hatch launches global aquaculture incubator in Hawai’i. More details here.
🌏 The Aquaculture Stewardship Council gives ASC certified farms until 14 January 2025 to switch to ASC compliant feed
Investments
🤖 RealData, Canadian customized data and automation provider to land-based farmers, secures USD 8m Series A round from Buoyant Ventures, S2G Ventures and The Nest Family Office
🌿 Algama, French-based startup that produces algae-based products, secures EUR 13m Series A round from Thai Union CVC Fund and Noshaq, Newtree Impact, Beyond Impact Advisors and Grupo Bimbo
🌱 Algiecel, Danish algae-based carbon capture and utilization startup, raises EUR 1.3m seed funding from Denmark’s Export and Investment Fund, UK family office and private individuals to initiate algae-product application trials with clients
💰 Cadman Capital Group, the family office and alternative asset investment firm, takes a strategic equity stake in Urchinomics
Acquisitions & IPO
💵 Yotta Acquisition Corp acquires NaturalShrimp, Dallas-based developer of unique RAS systems, by issuing 17.5 million shares at USD 175m. The combined company’s stock will be listed on the Nasdaq Capital Market.
🐟 Aker Salmon buys 25.3% stake for NOK 155m in land-based RAS start-up Gaia Salmon
🏭 Coast Seafood acquires Denmark-based salmon-processing firm Vega Salmon from Maj Invest, terms undisclosed
💉 ScaleAQ signs agreement to acquire vaccination specialist Skala Maskon
💰 Steakholder Foods launches an underwritten public offering of 6,500,000 shares at a price of USD 1.00, to raise gross proceeds of USD 6.5m after receiving grants to develop 3D-printed structured eel and grouper products
Funding
🌎 Michigan State University receives USD 800,000 grant from NASA for a three-year study of how aquaculture in Asia is affecting its land
💰 Proximar Seafood AS, land-based salmon farmer in Japan, receives JPY 4 billion in senior unsecured loan offer from Japanese bank to build production facility at the foot of Mount Fuji
Movements
Alt Feed & Protein
🍣 Vgarden, a foodTech developer and manufacturer of plant-based alternatives, launches clean-label, flaky tinned tuna
🐟 Karavela, largest canned fish producers in Northern Europe, introduces vegan faux fish range to UK and Germany
🪰 Volare to build insect industrial-scale facility in Finland to produce 5,000 tons of protein and lipids annual for fish feeds and pet foods
🦠 Thai Union seeks to grow alternative and marine protein business in Europe
🍤 Shrimp processor Klaas Puul teams up with shrimp feed producer Skretting, insect protein supplier Protix and algal oil producer Veramaris to supply supermarkets across EU with shirmp fed feed with lower marine ingredient inclusion
🧪 Nutreco and microbiome research company BiomEdit enters long-term agreement to leverage bioinformatics platform and produce novel feed additives
🇨🇳 China's soy reduction campaign could serve as an opportunity for alt-protein producers
🌎 U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory experts will attend a virtual consultation with counterparts from the China National Center for Food Safety Risk Assessment to discuss cultivated meat and its approval process
🇨🇦 Canadian project to investigate novel methods for protein separation to create a protein concentrate (>60% protein) from canola meal for aquafeeds
Farming
🌞 ESF Seafood installs solar panels for the 11,700m2 shrimp-processing plant as part of a 3 year sustainability plan to become 100% carbon neutral
🤖 Kura Sushi debuts “AI Sumagatsuo,” an AI-farmed mackerel tuna through a process utilizing artificial intelligence provided by Umitron Corporation
🏭 Kvarøy doubles down on Norwegian operations shifting to process nearly all of its own salmon in-house
🐡 University of Stirling's Institute of Aquaculture and WorldFish discovers that Zambian smallholder that stock indegenous, micronutrient-rich small fish species instead of monoculture cash crop tilapia can improve household nutrient intake
👩🔬 Nofima and UiT open EUR 8.3m aquaculture research facility RASforsk in Tromsø for onshore farming
Health & Welfare
🐞 Researchers constructs a computer model that simulates where salmon lice are most likely to develop resistance to pesticides used in salmon farms throughout southern Norway (paper here)
🐟 Research shows gradually exposing Atlantic salmon to changes in salinity led to a greater diversity in their intestinal bacterial communities
🐡 Global lumpfish experts state benefits of lumpfish as long-term tool in the management of sea lice in Atlantic salmon aquaculture (more from lumpfish expert Pat Reynolds)
😷 Study aims to improve welfare of Europe's top five farmed fish (seabass, seabream, salmon, trout and carp) is released
😷 New study demonstrates the efficacy of Sanacore GM to support immunocompetence and reduce the severity of vibriosis in gilthead seabream
🐠 IQC will support FAI to build China-specific tilapia welfare assessment protocol that can be used in farm practices
📖 FAI launches free online tilapia welfare training in 5 languages: Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai and English
Notable Reads
Making Sense of Big Ocean Data by Emily Underwood
The Oceans Are Teeming with Unknown Species by Jori Lewis
Taxonomy is going digital. We have microscopes where we can take images and we can do very advanced scanning of specimens, and you can do all this fantastic digital processing and imaging. Museums are heading to the full digitization of their collections. If you think about it, maybe decades into the future there will be a physical representation, but also a digital twin of the museums where you can look through all the collections and visualize the specimens without actually having to go there. And there’s so many new, exciting technologies coming including computer vision. All the facial recognition technology that we already use is going to be used for taxonomy and for identification tools. If we can digitize the specimens, we can then use computer vision and artificial intelligence to analyze them. And add that to molecular barcoding, which can place specimens closest to their nearest relatives and identify them in that way. We’re moving taxonomy into a completely new world.