SPOTLIGHT
Aquaculture Phoenix – Backstory to the development of a novel RAS feed company Andre Bok, Aqua Management Technologies
The Pure Ocean East London aquaculture facility was constructed as a state-of-the-art pilot scale marine fish farm in the East London Industrial Development Zone, South Africa in 2010. It employed the world’s leading recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) technology service providers and the country’s best engineers, project managers and RAS operators with a goal to prove the economic viability of farming marine fish on land. No expense was spared in the fulfilment of this ambition. But after the visionary investor and main funder of the project died in 2012, financial support for the pilot project declined. In 2016, after the resignation of the CEO and the CFO, Pure Ocean East London was in jeopardy, and the facility was placed under provisional liquidation. A new owner was sought, but none was found as investor sentiment in the marine RAS-based fish farming industry hit rock-bottom when other similar commercial scale ventures closed shop around the same time. During these dark days in aquaculture, Aqua Management Technologies (AMT) provided a glimmer of hope as it invested millions to fund growth trials at the facility, keeping it operational for over 18 months. During this time, it made a technological breakthrough in aquaculture feed formulation that is changing the destiny of the entire RAS farming industry – for the better. Now, with its proof-of-
concept complete, the RAS facility is under new ownership and is being commercialized to supply the local South African market with 300 tons of dusky kob (Argyrosomus japonicus) and yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandii) per annum. AMT is contracted to supply feed to the new operation.
Novel RAS feed formulation AMT’s breakthrough is based on a novel feed formulation that maximizes feed ingredient digestibility by using highly digestible ingredients, custom vitamin premixes and enzymes. By minimizing waste coming from the fish, the technology significantly improves the water quality that the fish live in, mitigating the impact of the “density effect” (i.e. everything that goes wrong with the increased feed rate in an intensive RAS system), so more fish can be stocked into a
Table 1. Average water quality parameters for the six months before and after switching to AMT Intensive feeds.
TAN Alkalinity
pH Buffer pH /kg feed
Standard marine feed
1.0 mg/L N
51 mg/L
150 g/kg
7.0
1 m3/kg
AMT Intensive
<0.1 mg/L N
76 mg/L
0 g/kg
7.45
1 m3/kg
Aquafeed: Advances in Processing & Formulation Vol 12 Issue 4 2020
Water exchange /kg feed
