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Tony Broadhurst is Technical Director for Aquaculture at Martec.
INTERVIEW
with Tony Broadhurst
HFM: Please tell us about yourself. What has been your journey in aquaculture? TB: I was born in Britain in 1958 and studied marine biology at Liverpool University in the late ‘70s. I was granted a CASE postgraduate research studentship with Shearwater Fish Farming to look at issues with rearing turbot in the early ‘80s. Then I moved to Mars to help with the early field development of their Frippak line of products. I moved with my family to Spain in 1986 to take on hatchery production of turbot, gilthead bream and seabass for Tinamenor. I’ve been doing pretty much the same ever since, but sometimes with different species and often for different companies. I came to Costa Rica to work for Martec almost four years ago, and I hope to still be with the group for a few
Hatchery Feed & Management Vol 10 Issue 2 2022
more years while we expand the snapper operation and diversify into other species. I am currently the company’s technical director for aquaculture. HFM: Grupo AquaFoods, the parent company of Martec S.A., recently acquired Grupo ACI. The company now runs two vertically-integrated fish operations in Costa Rica, one for tilapia and another for rose spotted snapper. Why did the company decide to invest in tilapia? TB: Tilapia is a very different kettle of fish from snapper, of course, but there is also quite a lot of common ground between the two. For AquaFoods, the advantages are two-fold. First, Martec and GACI are both based in Costa Rica and currently export most of their production to North America, so there are
