Land-based aquaculture is often an overlooked industry despite the widely held projection it is to experience significant growth within the next decade. One of the main appeals for RAS and flow-through systems is the plausibility of precision aquaculture. Partnering with RAS tech companies developing new technology for these underserved systems will help improve the return on investment required to build RAS facilities.
RAS offers a level of control that will help farms produce more by optimizing their operation beyond what is technically possible in the ocean. Supporting the creation of technology for tools like data retrieval and fish monitoring may be the move needed to help the industry grow and thrive. Supporting companies that can automate processes like feed disbursement, appetite monitoring, and biomass estimation will make land-based aquaculture much more appealing for investors and small companies looking to scale.
Many large-scale companies have begun to see these advantages and have begun to extend their post-smolts’ stay in tanks. Seafood giants like Grieg have used this as a strategy to increase production in recent years. New and established companies in the land-based aquaculture industry are likewise projected to experience significant growth: Atlantic Sapphire is expecting to produce 25,000 metric tons of salmon per year in their next phase while Nordic Aquafarms recentlygained key approvals for a huge expansion project in California and Maine.
Many aquatech companies focus on ocean-based farms to increase their profitability due to the larger addressable market, yet technology created for ocean-based aquaculture is not often transferable to RAS. Challenges like poor visibility due to stock density and water quality damage from overfeeding are not common issues in ocean-based aquaculture and therefore not understood by ocean-based tech companies.
Creating new technology that focuses on a burgeoning area of aquaculture requires a certain level of skill and innovation that is not a necessity in traditional aquaculture farming practices where technology continues to be developed and refined through decades of experience and shared knowledge. Developing new solutions for young companies that are not immediately profiting from investments is difficult and demands patience.
ReelData entered this industry in 2019 and found an oversaturated ocean-based market where dozens of tech companies had been dominating for decades. Upon further research, they found that the small and burgeoning industry of land-based aquaculture had yet to obtain support from well-known tech companies currently thriving in the ocean-based industry. With a highly creative and technical team, they were able to find early success with some of the biggest companies in land-based aquaculture including Atlantic Sapphire, The Kingfish Company, and Salmon Evolution.
The summer of 2022 might be an indication of what is in store for the land-based industry, as several companies announced the successful acquisition of permits for large facilities to be created across the globe. With these approvals secured, the aquaculture industry can be sure to experience a large surge in technology being developed to help support these farms and the many-thousand metric tons of fish they are projected to produce. As these farms become more established and begin to scale, tech companies will become increasingly more important for their ability to streamline aquaculture production.