SUSTAINABLE, NOVEL AND COST EFFECTIVE PROTEIN FOR AQUACULTURE

There is a growing gap in worldwide protein supply. To elaborate, on the demand side the world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 - 70% of this growth is expected to be in urban areas with high meat consumption.  On the supply side, the existing protein sources for the animal feed market, i.e., fishmeal and soybean meal, are both constrained by climate variability and land/water availability. For instance, over the last decade the cost of fishmeal, the widely used protein source for aquaculture, has almost tripled. This presents a significant market opportunity for sustainable and cost effective protein. String Pro, our product, is a superior protein from methane that addresses this growing gap. We leverage methane as a source of carbon to manufacture green chemicals and feed ingredients.  We are amongst a handful of companies worldwide and the only Asian company to successfully enable methane based value chain for protein feed ingredient.

The advantages of String pro are 1) cost-effective, sustainable and novel protein 2) proprietary technology platform, 3) significantly lower cost of production, 4) reliable protein supply, 5) easy traceability, 6) environmental sustainability and, 6) cradle-to-cradle solution for a low carbon future.

With >65% protein and an amino acid profile similar to fishmeal, String Pro, is a very attractive replacement for fishmeal. Our initial testing of String Pro as a fishmeal replacement for rainbow trout shows that it is a quality replacement. In brief, we conducted a 9 week feeding trial in juvenile rainbow trout (~21 g), where String Pro was used to partially or completely replace fish meal (25, 50, 75 and 100%) in the test diets. The experiment was conducted in a small recirculatory aquaculture system. At the end of the trial, zootechnical results indicated that feed efficiency (1.2-1.3), FCR (0.8) and growth was appreciably high in all the dietary groups. However, as expected, feed intake was found to decrease at higher fish meal substitution and had an impact on performance indices. While the absolute feed utilisation and growth response are very promising, further optimization of the protein production process and addition of feed attractants could facilitate substantial inclusion of the String Pro protein in aquaculture feeds.