Ace Aquatec selected as Global Aquaculture Alliance Innovation Award finalist
21 October 2019
We are one of three finalists pitching for the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Innovation Award in Chennai, India on 23rdOctober.
We have been chosen for the animal welfare benefits of our Humane Stunner Universal (A-HSU®), an in-water electric stunner. The A-HSU® consists of a water-filled pipe lined with electrodes which render the fish unconscious without removing them from the water. This innovation reduces fish stress, improves flesh quality and can double the volume of fish processed per hour.
After quick rollout to early adopters the A-HSU® is already being used by a wide variety of farms around the world. The flexibility of in-water electric stunning has allowed it to be used with a wide variety of species, including salmon, trout, yellowtail, sea bass and sea bream – with a variation now available for prawns, lobsters and crabs too.
When asked about why our team decided to focus on the slaughter process, Head of Sales and Marketing, Mike said “There has been a lack of equipment to help people farm their fish ethically when it came to slaughter. We saw stunning systems that damage the fish or don’t produce an even electrical field, meaning some fish get more stunned than others, so our goal was to create a more humane and efficient version of electric stunning that would leave fish unconscious for two-to-three minutes, enough time to bleed and kill the fish immediately or to put them onto ice so they’ll remain unconscious until they die.”
This is not the first time we have been recognised for our electric stunner. In 2017, after the core technology was proven effective we were announced as the first non-Norwegian winner of the Aqua Nor Innovation Award. Then earlier this year we won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Innovation for the positive impact on animal welfare the HSU had with early adopting farms.
We will present our innovations at the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s annual GOAL conference on 23rd October, alongside two other finalists, with the winner being decided by the audience of 500 industry leaders.
