Piszolla is the first in Spain to adopt Ace stunner
01 August 2024
Ace Aquatec has installed its first humane stunning system in Spain after rainbow trout farmer Piszolla decided to upgrade its harvesting operations.
The company, part of the big French Aqualande group, chose the Humane Stunner Universal (A-HSU®) because of its high welfare credentials and processing efficiency for its site in Alba de Tormes.
Aqualande, which added Piszolla to its farming assets in March 2018, will look to add up to four more systems for its Spanish and French trout farms in 2025 and 2026.
Piszolla currently produces around 5,000 tonnes a year from its trout ponds, located in four farms served by the water of the River Tormes in the Salamanca region near Madrid. The company, a family firm that has been farming trout on land since the early 1980s, is a vertically integrated business, controlling all stages of production from egg to plate, with primary and secondary processing facilities at Alba and at a smokery nearby.
Piszolla’s Julio Hernandez, Regional Manager, and Roberto Sanchez, Head of Technical, have been in discussion with Ace Aquatec since first making contact at the Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona in 2022.
Ace Aquatec Director of Engineering, Michael Rennie, who oversaw the installation in Spain, said it was one of the most straightforward projects he has worked on.
‘The stunner is a standard A-HSU installed at the processing plant beside the ponds, from where fish are pumped into two raceways and then directly into the stunner, before being graded. The Piszolla team are very self-sufficient and the installation, which took place in June, went very smoothly’.
‘Julio and Roberto had visited one of our clients on the west coast of Scotland twice to see the in-water electric stunner in action so they knew what they were looking for in terms of harvesting efficiency and, crucially, welfare. They are a forward-thinking company and ahead of the rest of the sector in Spain in their pioneering of more humane harvesting.’
Piszolla supplies fresh and frozen portioned trout to markets in Spain and other European countries, with year-round availability, and also produces high-end smoked trout, a premium product sold to major supermarket chains.
Retailers globally are now requiring fish to be ethically stunned and there is increasing pressure on producers in Europe to adopt more humane stunning methods.
In Ace Aquatec’s award-winning A-HSU®, recognised by fish farmers around the world, fish are stunned in less than one second with minimal stress or handling prior to slaughter.
‘The installation of Ace Aquatec's trout stunner will enable us not only to streamline our operations, but also to break new ground for animal welfare standards in Spain,’ added Piszolla Regional Manager Julio Hernandez. ‘We aspire to be pioneers of humane harvesting standards in this region, and this technology is set to have a huge impact for us in terms of generating high-quality, high-welfare and sustainable products for consumers globally".
‘Piszolla is happy to be in the vanguard of the move to stricter animal welfare standards during harvesting,’ said Rennie. ‘Their vision for better welfare, where fish are dispatched in a pain-free process, aligns with Ace Aquatec’s long-term commitment to humane slaughter and opens the door to other producers in the region, looking to improve their practices.’
Ace Aquatec is now talking to other potential customers in Spain and will be able to show them the Piszolla system in action so they can see first-hand the advantages of welfare-first stunning technology.
