Aquaculture for all

First contestants register for $300,000 aquafeed prize

Salmonids Shrimp Feed ingredients +8 more

The first six companies to registration for the latest F3 Challenge – which is offering three $100,000 prizes for the makers of fish feed containing no fish – have been revealed.

Salmon farms use over 20 percent of the fishmeal and 60 percent of the fish oil consumed by the aquaculture sector, despite only accounting for 4 percent of the volume of global aquaculture harvests

The F3 Challenge – Carnivore Edition is designed to accelerate the development and adoption of fishmeal and fish oil substitutes in feeds and will award $100,000 in each of three categories – salmonid, shrimp, and other carnivorous species – to the contestants that produce and sell the most “fish-free feed.”

Contestants who have submitted a qualifying feed sample can record “fish-free” feed sales from 1 October 2020 towards the prize. A new timeline for the competition will be announced at a later date. Six competitors are currently registered for the contest, and many are seeking partners.

The existing contestants include:

  1. BGreen Technologies, a young startup based in India, is competing in the “other carnivorous species” category with its Asian seabass feed.
  2. US-based Chapul Farms, produces functional proteins for food and feed ingredients by raising its soldier fly farm larvae on agricultural by-products, primarily for salmonid feed. Chapul Farms is seeking sales partners for the challenge.
  3. Empagran, an aquaculture company with 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) of shrimp ponds in Ecuador, a packing plant, hatchery and feed mill, is selling a fish-free feed for white shrimp (Litopenaues vannamei) in partnership with Veramaris. Empagran’s feed contains soybean meal and Veramaris’ algal oil, which is rich in both EPA and DHA.
  4. Jiangsu Fuhai Biotech Co, which was founded in China in 2015, uses fermented dehulled full fat soybean as a raw material for use in feed for salmonid, shrimp and other carnivorous species. The firm is seeking product development and sales partners for all three award categories.
  5. UK-based Remediiate grows microalgae at scale and is seeking product development partners to formulate a finished feed to compete for the shrimp category.
  6. Star Milling Co is selling rainbow trout feed containing a barley protein concentrate produced by its partner Scoular Company. The patented process Scoular uses to obtain its high-quality, nutrient dense and highly digestible protein source is an ideal complement to replace fishmeal in aquaculture and pet food.

Background

Each year, an estimated 16 million tonnes of wild fish are caught exclusively for use as fishmeal and fish oil in global food production. Salmon farms use over 20 percent of the fishmeal and 60 percent of the fish oil consumed by the aquaculture sector. Shrimp farming is another dominant consumer of the global fishmeal supply. A recent study found that if business as usual continues, forage fisheries will reach ecological limits by 2037.

The F3 Challenge aims to make it unnecessary to use wild fish in feeds, so that they can remain in the environment for other species, and aquaculture’s growth becomes unconstrained from wild resource availability, assuring greater food security in the future.

The qualifying feeds for all prize categories must not contain any ingredients consisting of or derived from marine animals, including but not limited to, fish, squid, shrimp or krill. For official contest rules, visit: https://f3challenge.org/.

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