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Aquaculture and alternative seafood preaccelerator in Singapore H
ATCH, the aquaculture tech venture capital company is known for its global accelerator programme investing in companies focused on sustainability improvements in the aquaculture value chain. The first instalment of the new programme called ‘Hatch Innovation Studio’ took place in Singapore from May 4 to June 11, 2021. The Innovation Studio SG 2021 focused on developing aquaculture and alternative seafood projects. It is supported by Startup SG, Enterprise Singapore.
insect-based shrimp additive product (ShrimProX). The market is feeds for petfood, livestock, marine shrimp and freshwater prawn.
Wayne Murphy, Co-Founder and Partner at Hatch, said, “Seafood consumption drives the growth of the aquaculture and alternative seafood in the region. With the rising populations, existing opportunities in the region will only grow further. We are looking for the best ideas to develop and scale into viable businesses to address the challenges in Asia.”
Australia and Philippines based COAST 4C have a social enterprise focusing on seaweed production and includes a fishing net buy-back scheme. The mission is to build vibrant and resilient blue economies in marginalised coastal areas that benefit the 4Cs: Communities, Conservation, Commerce and Climate. Over the next 24 months, it will be seeking seed funding.
Hatch has been working closely with Enterprise Singapore to drive innovation since 2019. It is committed to supporting more talent from Singapore and the surrounding region to create a local pipeline of aquaculture and alternative seafood startups. In 2021, there are 11 companies, ranging from early-stage pre-commercial projects to companies that have raised seed funding. The studio is a part-time programme to help them develop their businesses and network with industry experts. The teams showcased their technologies to industry stakeholders and investors to explore potential collaborations at the Aquatech Pitch Day in June. A summary of the participating team is given below:
Singapore’s Aquaculture Innovation Centre or AIC is working on a vaccine to combat iridovirus in fish; a multivalent oral vaccine using algae as the carrier for top coating on feed for less than 3g fish. The initial target will be local farms, followed by farms in China and Southeast Asia. Funding is required initially for the pilot plant and commercial validation.
Singapore based The Agrata group uses recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) for a hatchery based, vertically integrated Scylla serrata (mud crab) production. The partner farming operations are on Riau Islands, Indonesia. Agrata, has secured funding in November 2020 and will commence operations in August 2021 and produce the first batch in January 2022. Vietnam based TEPBAC has a platform of software and hardware IoT solutions for a more profitable and transparent shrimp farming. These include realtime monitoring of several parameters, such as pH, temperatures, salinity and oxygen. The next focus is pangasius farming. Singapore based Universal Aquaculture (UniAqua) has an indoor high-density shrimp farm using proprietary Hybrid Biological Recirculation System (HBRS)-an energy saving water treatment system, developed from 6 years of research. Their inaugural 1,400m2 farm is expected to produce a tonne of vannamei shrimp per week. The target is to have farms close to markets, within Singapore and overseas, with partners. Singapore based Protenga has scaled to commercial production in Johor, Malaysia with its data driven technology for insect meal production. In 2020, it raised USD1.6 million from a seed investment round. It has an
July/August 2021 AQUA Culture Asia Pacific
Impacfat has cultured meat technology to produce cellbased fat (adipocytes) efficiently and sustainably from edible fish species to complement existing plant-based meat or muscle-dominant cultured meat to improve its taste, texture, appearance and nutritional value.
Indonesia based Minapoli, a startup for information and business in fisheries and aquaculture wishes to integrate all segments in Indonesia’s fisheries and aquaculture to contribute to its development. It is the first marketplace for aquaculture. The coverage in Indonesia is over 47 cities in 18 provinces. A target is to expand into the Asia Pacific region. Singapore based Luminis Water Technologies provides proprietary water sampling and analysis equipment, molecular diagnostics, rapid in-the-field pathogen ID, and advanced AI microbiome analytics. The business model is subscription-based and consulting/analytical project services. RAS Aquaculture is a farm technology company with production systems, hardware, software to scale up sustainable and efficient indoor aquaculture of crustaceans and fish using a combination of closed loop recirculating systems and biofloc. The business model is subscription-based and consulting/analytical project services. It expects to scale up by 2023 with seed funding. Through biotechnology, TeOra designs proprietary peptides for immunostimulation and disease prevention. These can target multiple diseases and can be done 10 times faster and 100 times cheaper than traditional methods. The startup is initially targeting white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) prevention in shrimp. Seed funding required is USD1 million to upscale. It also needs strategic partnerships to conduct commercial trials.
