Accelerating and celebrating efforts towards zero waste in Aquaculture
01 August 2024
Ace Aquatec’s success in the Aquaculture Awards 2024, winning in both the Collaboration and Innovation categories, was an amazing feat for the whole team and caps the achievements we’ve made so far this year.
Our partnership with Tiny Fish, whereby smaller hatchery fish are culled humanely and then distributed into the pet food and essential oils market, has highlighted an important sector. The combination of A-HCS® smolt stunning technology and Tiny Fish logistics can unlock a new value chain, where no fish are wasted and all smolt production is sustainable.
We have already installed systems in much of the Scottish sector and will next look at moving into Chile, Norway and the other salmon farming regions where we operate.
The innovation award for our A-BIOMASS® camera, meanwhile, acknowledged more than five years of R&D and the brilliance of our software engineers.
Through various grants we have been able to bring our AI people in-house, embedding their expertise within the company. This has made a big difference to how we take our technology forward, branching into new and exciting areas and opening up enormous possibilities for the A-BIOMASS® camera system.
The potential is endless, using machine learning and artificial intelligence to not only detect and quantify fish biomass automatically, but also to identify health challenges by observing fish behaviour. The R&D is ongoing and the opportunities to improve fish husbandry are immense.
Developing the biomass camera has been a collective effort with all of the UK farmers, and in particular Hendrix Genetics, and we’re now seeing compelling data validating the system in our overseas markets too.
For example, Florida based Atlantic Sapphire, one of the biggest RAS salmon farmers, has reported excellent results, with very high accuracy levels, after installing the system recently.
The word is out about A-BIOMASS® and to meet increasing demand we are looking to scale up production this year, building many more cameras to deploy across different territories and fish species.
As we grow the business, we have restructured our sales team, with Ben Perry joining in January as Head of Sales, and new recruits around the world proving pivotal to our traction in key regions such as Chile. What we have been able to demonstrate this year is that once Ace has a foothold in a market, and there is confidence in our high-welfare technology products, customers are making repeat orders, which is a massive endorsement.
We now have five stunners with a leading Scottish producer, three with Chile’s largest processor Abick, three at tilapia giant Regal Springs, and three at Danish trout farmer Musholm, with more orders coming in from Canada, too, driven by the new welfare at slaughter regulations there.
In every area where we have a presence, customers who started with one of our products are taking on other technologies and seeing greater levels of data through our A-FISH IQ™ portal. Pioneering smart and innovative farming technology will help the sector minimise food loss throughout operations, repurpose waste into valuable resources and transition to a low carbon future – a win-win for everyone!
- Nathan Pyne-Carter, Ace Aquatec CEO
