Firm expanding in aquaculture

US - Australis Aquaculture LLC is planning an expansion with a 19,403-square-foot addition and other site improvements, according to the company's site plan review application to the Planning Board.

The company, known in a former incarnation as Aquafuture, is a farm with fish grown entirely indoors in tanks with proprietary filtration systems since 1987.

After struggling financially, Aquafuture became Mass Fin Technolgoy and then Australis in 2004. It is now dedicated to growing mostly one specie of fish, the barramundi, popular in Australia and the name of one of the first teams on the television show "Survivor."

Australis is owned by a Perth-based holding company of the same name. At the start of Australis last August, the local aquaculture operation was expecting a financial turnaround, Goldman said last year.

That's because by switching to a tropical fish specie that cannot be grown in the outdoor fish farms, the company would no longer have to compete with those operations that have proliferated in the South.

Source: MassLive