aquaflow by aquablurb | May 15 - 28, 2023
Happy Tuesday fellow aqua-enthusiasts.
In the past week, I met some incredible innovators at the Blue Food Innovation Summit in London, the first forum I’ve been to since the start of Covid-19. A key takeaway is the urgent need to expand the aquafeed raw materials basket to allow it to meet upcoming aquaculture production. Products such as Calysta’s Feedkind, Innovafeed’s insect protein and Green Plains’ fermented corn protein all have the potential to help expand seafood production.
Startup Spotlight
The Seaweed Biomass Game Plan
Located on the ruggedly beautiful Beara Peninsula, Pure Ocean Algae recently completed the construction of a 600 m² seaweed hatchery, the largest indoor seaweed hatchery to date in Europe. Once fully-fitted, this facility is designed to produce over one million metres of seed materials annually.
Founder Michael O’Neill has dedicated his time to solving the European’s seaweed biomass bottleneck issue. “The industry needs to produce high levels of high-quality and low-cost cultivation and seed material,” O’Neill explained, “relying on wild seeds wouldn’t yield the same results.” According to O’Neill, the price of cultivated kelp needs to fall to EUR 500/T (compared to EUR 1300/T today) to meet downstream demands.
Pure Ocean Algae owns 40 hectares of licensed multi-species seaweed growing sites, as well as a 20,000 sq ft state of the art, fully licensed, equipped, hatchery and primary processing facility.
O’Neill plans to branch out into different varieties of red and brown seaweeds – including saccharina, alaria and digitata.
Read here for more insights.
🙌 Ask - Pure Ocean Algae is looking to implement a capital investment plan, in-excess of EUR 30m over the next five-year period. Aim to complete the round by the end of 2023.
👉 Introduce me to Pure Ocean Algae
Deals
🌿 Immersion Group, Australian red seaweed Asparagopsis cultivation startup, secures undisclosed funding from Nissui Corporation to reduce methane emissions from ruminants
🍤 eFishery, Indonesian shrimp farming tech startup, raises USD 108m pushing valuation to USD 1.3 billion post-funding (pending confirmation)
Acquisitions
🤖 Innovasea, a global leader in technologically advanced aquatic solutions for aquaculture and fish tracking, acquires Aquanetix, a UK-based aquaculture software company, to grow in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions
Noteworthy Startups
⭐️ Australian Asaparagopsis company SeaStock selected to participate in the MassChallenge Switzerland 2023 accelerator program
🫛 Soy protein concentrate producer Satavie selected as winner of the 2022 Soy Innovation Challenge by the United Soybean Board in partnership with The Yield Lab Institute
Grants
💡 The Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), with the announced support for a further 6 innovation projects, reaches 100-project milestone following latest GBP 2.5m funding round
🦠 Researchers from Denmark receive DKK 13.5m from The Innovation Fund to research the use of bacteriophages on disease mitigation in aquaculture to replace antibiotics
🌱 The AlgaeProBANOS project, led by the Submariner Network and funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme, will develop, test and scale up new sustainable products from algae
🇦🇺 The government of Western Australia pledges USD 8.5m over the next 4 years to drive aquaculture R&D
Market Watch
🇳🇴 The Conservative Party, The Christian Democratic Party and the Left Party leaves the Norway’s aquaculture tax negotiation table | Norway’s proposed salmon tax lowered from 40% to 25%
🇺🇳 No deals reached yet on renewal of the UN brokered Black Sea grain export corridor resulting in a volatile grain market
🍣 Norwegian salmon prices declines over 7% last week from NOK 111.69/kg to NOK 103.08/kg
🏭 Methionine price remains stagnant due to weak demand and supply overhang; production capacity push for threonine and lysine in China
🌎 The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations calls for global effort in strengthening aquaculture production
Movements
Feed
🇳🇴 SINTEF research shows with strong investment into local feed development, Norway can produce 489k tonnes of feed protein raw materials in 2030 for local use
🍤 Aller Aqua and premix specialist VDS unveils premium RAS shrimp feed
📈 ADM expands functional aquafeed portfolio with 6 feed mills to support the Asia-Pacific market and cover all aqua species
🌾 EU Commission’s Mars bureau nudges forecast for EU 2023 rapeseed yield higher to 3.34 tonnes per hectare
Farming
🌿 Ocean farm optech startup Oceanfarmr and regenerative seaweed farming social enterprise Coast 4C collaborates on mobile technologies to help improve the livelihoods of small-scale seaweed producers in Southeast Asia
💡 Laksesystemer and Agrilight partners to develop LED lights for land-based aquaculture to reduce stress level of fish, reduce energy consumption and improve behavior
🍤 Shrimp aquatech startup XpertSea teams with Conservation International to launch “climate-smart” shrimp pilot in Ecuador
🐟 Innovasea supports Aruba-based company Petros to secure government approval for a 3,000 ton open-ocean red snapper farm
🇬🇧 The UK’s national landowner The Crown Estate commissioned non-profit Additive.earth to explore and develop the concept of Aquaculture Enterprise Zones in England and Wales
🐟 BC Salmon Farmers Association fears further closures of salmon farms in British Columbia will end farming and result in thousands of job loss
Health & Genetics
🧬 Australian James Cook University genetics researcher aim to halve the sexual maturity time of barramundi from 4-6 years to 2 years
🦞 Singapore Crawfish advances red claw genetic mapping and selection program to improve performance in crawfish
🧬 Benchmark Genetics receives the Disease-Free CompartmentCertification from Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service allowing the export of salmon ova from Chile to other markets
Seaweed
🌱 Seaweed supplement in aquafeed demonstrates 14% increase in growth rates in farmed pangasius per Ocean Harvest Technology’s 75 day trial
🌿 New collaborative The Seaweed in East Anglia project led by Hethel Innovation aims to build up seaweed industry in East Anglia
🇨🇦 Ecology Action Centre’s new report reveals Nova Scotia’s emerging kelp farming and product sector can be worth USD 200m in 3-5 years
💩 Researchers collaborate on project SeaFree to develop a closed cycle on land that utilizes residual nutrients and CO2 from shrimp and fish farming to grow seaweed
Sustainability
🦐 Key aquaculture live feed provider Utah Great Salt Lake’s brine shrimp (Artemia franciscana) fishery lands MSC certification
👩⚖️ The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive entered into forcewithin the EU will result in fundamental shifts on seafood company’s sustainability metric reporting
🇰🇷 ASC expands into South Korea with 73 ASC certified farm sites at over 11,000 tonnes of annual volume
📸 Short documentary film Journey to Ithaca, the story of an ocean cleanup from an abandoned fish farm, wins Best Environmental Film at the Cannes World Film Festival
💰 Ecuador announces world-record debt-for-nature swap at USD 1.6 billion to benefit Galápagos marine life
Notable Reads
The association between blue buttons and juvenile fish was shown in a 1963 paper that described how Malabar trevally panicked when removed from their hosts and returned as swiftly as possible. Even more intriguing, the juvenile trevally showed an attachment to a specific blue button, returning over and over again to the same one.