The changing landscape around us has required many changes – including renewed global pressure on food security, domestic food production and reducing dependency on imports. This is linked to a demand for recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) for land-based aquaculture solutions.
SmartAqua and Wiley have combined and combined decades of international experience in the aquafarming and fish processing industries to provide turnkey services for land-based aquaculture, project management for aquaculture systems, planning and construction of processing plants.
The new team is working on several projects with some larger players in the RAS area as well as existing sea cage operators. International travel restrictions by COVID-19 have led to a massive decline in the import and export of seafood – both from the supply and the demand side.
"SmartAqua has been working with Wiley for many years," said Alastair Smart, managing director of SmartAqua. "With the rapid expansion into land-based agriculture and the need for turnkey project management of a land-based facility integrated into the processing, we decided to formally bring our skills together."
Logan Ashmole, senior product manager at Wiley, says the relationship works well. “We see an increasing number of proposed RAS projects, especially for salmon farming. There are more than 50 projects (and counts) proposed by RAS for onshore salmon farming.
"The estimated total production of these announced projects by 2050 corresponds to 25% of the total current salmon production at around 600,000 tons."
Joseph Tuma, RAS specialist from SmartAqua, explains the reasons for the growth in the land-based aquaculture sector. “There is a misunderstanding that the RAS concept is still in early development, although the sea cage salmon industry is getting more and more smolt from its RAS facilities to provide the 2.4 million tons of salmon produced annually. We have seen that smolt sizes have evolved from 30g to 100g to 150g and now, in some cases, from 0.5 to 1kg smolt to shorten the sea phase and control the risks in the sea, especially around sea lice . The technology is there, and the move to keep fish a little longer to reach 4 to 5 kg is about controlling the size of the business.
Mr. Ashmole sums up: “In general, one of the main strengths of RAS is local production. If there is a glimpse of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has shaken the world this year, it is the need to strengthen domestic, sustainable food production, and we look forward to partnering with SmartAqua to help the aquaculture industry do so to help grow on the protein market. "
