The German startup was co-founded by two former engineers from Europe’s first large-scale RAS – Meeresfischzucht Völklingen (currently called The Infinite Sea Company) – Kai Wagner and Christian Steinbach, alongside business administration specialist Carolin Ackermann. The trio believed that they could design a more efficient and affordable RAS design, and they proceeded to draw up a business plan sufficiently impressive to secure €1.5 million in funding from the German Ministry of Economics.
“We thought about how to do RAS better and developed the idea of a decentralized, small-scale approach for on-land fish farming and built a prototype of the idea,” Ackermann – who is also CEO of the company – recalls.
The design is based on assembling four shipping containers to form a 120 m2 farming unit, and operations at the pilot site suggest that each unit is capable of annually producing 7.8 tonnes of fish.
“Customers [in Germany] need a building permit but don’t need a license for discharging the water, as it’s only a small quantity – around 500 liters per day. This means it can be discharged into the municipal wastewater system – which is what we do – but one of our customers uses the wastewater in their biogas plant. We’ve also seen a lot of interest from potential customers to couple fish farming with aquaponics – to use the wastewater to grow saltwater-tolerant plants like Salicornia,” she explains.
Read the full article at the Fish Site