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According to co-founder, Joao Rito, the startup was established to “bring something new to aquaculture”. And, just over a decade after the research project that launched the company was initiated, it’s preparing to build its first commercial-scale corvina (Argyrosomus regius) RAS facility – backed by €12.5 million of Portuguese and European (EMFAF) public funding, matched by a similar sum from private investors.
As Rito explains, this “pilot commercial farm” will have the capacity to produce 700 tonnes of corvina a year and include hatchery, grow-out and processing facilities in a 10,000 square metre building. Expected to be operational within two years and run by a team of around 30 employees, the project reflects Rito’s ambition to create a whole new industry for a species – and a production system – that he’s convinced can take the continent by storm.
“Corvina deserves its place alongside salmon, sea bass and sea bream as one of Europe’s key aquaculture species,” he argues.
Although corvina - which are also known as meagre - have been farmed fairly widely in net pens by companies including Andromeda and Avramar, Rito sees Seaentia as breaking new ground.
A startup is born
The team’s early years focused on research and validation for farming corvina in RAS, aided by the establishment of a strategic partnership with IPMA – which also provided free juveniles for use in their trials.
“By that time IPMA already had 10 years of experience with corvina and they were presenting the results at conference after conference and we were looking at the amazing results on growth levels, growth performance, robustness against diseases… the quality of the product,” Rito recalls.
“But for some reason that I don't understand, nobody was speaking about corvina in terms of private investors or entrepreneurs. Nobody was actually doing it in RAS,” he adds.
As a result, Seaentia decided to embark on a proof-of-concept phase in order to gain confidence from investors, partners and customers. And Rito was happy with many of the outcomes – not least the end product.
“We've reached the point where we have a very high quality product. Now I want to actually create awareness of the general population of this quality and how and why do they want to actually buy this product,” he reflects.
“If you're looking for ceviche sushi restaurants, they're looking for [corvina] because it's a very firm species.. our fish has less than 1 percent fat and 21 percent protein. How many fish do you find with 21 percent of protein content for their whole body? Very, very few. It's really an incredible product,” he enthuses.
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Rapid growth is another area which impressed Rito.
“Imagine a seabass or a seabream grows 500 grams in two years. We are able to grow corvina to 2.5 kilos in one and a half year. It's the same growth as salmon,” he reflects.
And, unlike salmon, which is a cold water species, he argues that the warm water corvina has much greater global production potential – a factor that matches his long-term international ambitions.
“It's much more easy to spread warm water species than a cold water species in the world,” he notes.
As Rito concedes, it’s no easy mission: while corvina had long been appreciated by consumers and chefs in Portugal, it had not yet been fully embraced as a farmed species in controlled systems. As a result he is in the process of developing a range of branded products, and sees marketing as being vital to the company’s success.
He argues that the unique nature of Seaentia’s product is both a blessing and a curse.
“We don't know any other company in the world producing corvina in RAS. And that differentiates the product already. So we're the first one. And somebody once told me it's amazing to be the first one because at a certain point someone can be better than you, but you will always be the first one,” he explains.
“But it's very difficult for one company alone to mature the market for a specific product,” he adds.
As a result, Rito would welcome the arrival of others in the field.
“Even if other companies can come up and start similar projects with corvina, we have no problem because that will actually help us mature the market,” he explains.
Major milestones
As well as the quality of their fish, Rito sees the assembly of their team as a major achievement.
“We've attracted some of the most experienced people operating RAS in the world to be part of us. We have a very young team with very high levels of motivation to do whatever we want to do,” he explains.
He believes that the team – and their ever-deepening experience – has been integral to the company’s successful evolution over the last four years and says that they’ve achieved amazing results, despite relying on in-house skills and limited budgets.
The future of RAS
While Rito is well aware of the hardships being experienced by most of the companies attempting to grow market-sized salmon in RAS, he believes that a combination of scale, experience and the introduction of technology from other sectors all point to a bright future for the RAS sector.
“Things like detecting anomalies in pumps before they break. Detecting these type of things by using the technology that's already developed [in other industries] will help the sector, and that's something we need to do sooner rather than later,” he argues.
Above all, he sees a reduction in the costs of RAS projects through standardisation and replicability as being fundamental to the sector’s success. As he observes, it’s taken them a year to make the calculations required for the design of their new farm, but reducing this planning phase through standardising design and equipment could save huge amounts of time and money.
“We have to shorten these periods a lot to actually allow us to grow much faster. How do we shorten these periods? Let's standardise everything as much as possible and find suppliers that can actually work with us to reduce the costs of each of the components, to make everything much cheaper,” Rito argues.
It’s clearly not going to happen overnight, but Rito remains confident that RAS is moving in the right direction and the huge investments made in the sector are beginning to pay off.
“In 10 years time I will be telling you completely different numbers than the ones we have right now. I am sure that we will be able to reduce the capex invested for the same amount of fish produced in these types of systems,” he asserts.
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