Novel farming system to produce sustainable marine zooplankton protein for aquafeed (FS114)

Project Outcome:

The goal of this SIF feasibility project was for Aquanzo to demonstrate that marine zooplankton (artemia) could be grown in a prototype lab-scale system, under controlled conditions, using agricultural byproducts to ultimately be processed into a meal that has similar characteristics to fishmeal.

Through the SIF Feasibility grant, Aquanzo has designed and built the first iteration system and scaled the production volume more than 50-fold, from 80L to over 4430L during this project and integrated it within an aquaculture recirculation system (RAS). Several parameters and processes were optimised to consistently produce biomass, which included an almost threefold yield increase over the first 5 months and the analysing of the energy consumption of the system. Furthermore, the team has demonstrated that the use of different feedstocks is leading to final product nutritional profile differences, validating the potential to tailor products.

Building and operating our first artemia lab prototype demonstrated the feasibility to develop a novel farming system, sustainably produce marine ingredients and in the medium-term create a new industry sector alongside insect and single cells to support the development of aquaculture.