The next wave of innovation
06 February 2024
The official launch at Aqua Nor of our A-BIOMASS® camera was undoubtedly a milestone moment for Ace Aquatec, capping more than five years of R&D and bringing to market technology that will be truly game changing for the aquaculture sector.
The camera uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to detect and quantify fish biomass automatically, producing real-time data for fish farmers. Pinpointing the accuracy of the camera to within millimetres, following extensive testing in Scotland, has validated the system, and the response from customers has been overwhelmingly positive, reflected in a strong order book. Farmers tell us they love the lightness of the camera, which makes it easily manoeuvrable from pen to pen, and they also find the accessibility of the data in the portal a real benefit. The first 70 systems have already been ordered and we are now looking to scale up production to keep abreast of demand.
To this end, we hope to be able to announce new investment partners in Q1 to join our existing backers Aqua-Spark, Chroma Ventures and Earth Capital Ltd. Grant funding, amounting to a total £2 million, from the European Innovation Council and Innovate UK, has facilitated our research efforts in the past year and means we can further accelerate our technological innovations in 2024.
The past 12 months have also seen the standardisation of our humane stunning system, moving to mass production, and extending our global reach to new markets and new species, such as Murray Cod in Australia and tilapia with Regal Springs in Mexico, Honduras and Indonesia.
In Scotland, our marine protection systems are back in the water as trials in Shetland demonstrate the impact on predators of low frequency A-ASR® (acoustic startle response) RT1s, which have been shown, in separate research, to avoid the specialised hearing ranges of dolphins and porpoises. We are all excited by these latest trials which have the potential to unlock EPS (European protected species) licence applications for Scottish salmon farmers as they try to protect their stocks against seals.
We have been busy, too, in other sectors. With the renewables market experiencing an uplift in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the subsequent quest for greater energy security, our FaunaGuard systems have helped offshore construction activities in the North Sea safeguard marine life.
Looking ahead, the core of our work will be building up our digital platform, providing even more insights for farmers. Future features of the A-BIOMASS® camera could include the detection of disease, maturation and changes in behaviour, enabling better forecasting. The camera will also be adapted for others species, such as tilapia and sea bass, which should be a relatively straightforward process, given the flexible design of the system. Already with our in-water stunners, we work in a range of different markets with a range of different species, and now we’re talking to all those customers about our biomass technology as well.
The strides we’ve made in innovation and in opening up new markets have been accompanied by a growth in the size of the business, with recruitment in Scotland and around the world increasing our staff numbers to more than 40. And we expect to grow by another 15 to 20 per cent next year as we meet ambitious targets across all our products, quite something for a company that began life just over 10 years ago from a small base in Dundee, the city we still call home.
