Eight years ago, a realization came to Dragon Feeds Managing Director Tony Smith that while in the years and decades ahead aquaculture will have to provide more and more of the world's seafood, to use feeds that use marine oil and protein from wild stocks isn't a viable long-term solution.
Smith foresaw a point when all natural supplies would be accounted for. He is adamant that today the aquaculture and fish-feed industries have reached that point. These resources have already been stretched far enough, he told SeafoodSource recently.
Fortunately, in the eight years that have passed since his epiphany, Smith has geared the Welsh-based Dragon Feeds toward the development and production of a truly sustainable alternative to fishmeal.
His solution, which uses the polychaete Nereis virens, a species of sea worm that's low in the food chain, seems to fit the bill. It has certainly caught the imagination of producers, buyers and even celebrity chefs. Heston Blumenthal of the three-Michelin-starred Fat Duck Restaurant this week sent his film crew and chefs down to visit the operation ahead of a new fish-focused terrestrial TV series.
Dragon can produce 30 metric tons wet weight of its polychaete per hectare. It's currently ramping up the number of ponds it has on a new 112-acre site at Pendine. The plan is to have 270 ponds in operation on this new location, a lot which will be used for polychaete worm production.
Eight commercial trout farming companies are now using Dragon's unique feed and a leading UK supermarket chain has given the concept a big "thumbs up." More and more enquiries are being made each day as the grapevine continues to do its work.
The problem is Dragon seems to be alone in the furrow it's forging. Smith is extremely frustrated at the apparent lack of R&D being conducted by the big boys in the aqua-feed industry. Dragon's website delivers a taste of this disappointment.
"The aquaculture industry has been dominated for many years by a small number of large feed producers who are constantly telling us that they are working toward a sustainable alternative, which to date has not been forthcoming. Yes, they have produced feeds using alternative proteins to fishmeal, but these have had marginal if any success and have made no impact on the industry," said Smith on the site.
According to Smith, these same feed producers have also been very dismissive of his fishmeal alternative.
To prove the doubters wrong, Dragon has been producing its own rainbow trout in ponds adjacent to its worm and algae ponds. There's no smoke or mirrors. Barring a few worm-harvesting machines that Dragon has manufactured itself, it's a very straight forward operation. And for the record, it is producing 5 kilogram fish in just 15 months. That's quite remarkable growth.
The marine algae is for the next stage of Dragon's journey. And Smith is confident that algae will replace its standard fish oil in the next 18 months.
"I challenge any feed company to prove that what we're doing isn't right," said Smith.
But rather than continue to try to win over its fellow feed producers, which would surely be an arduous and probably fruitless strategy, Dragon prefers instead to demonstrate to people closer to the end consumer — like buyers and chefs — what it's doing and why.
The plan is to get as many people to the Port Talbot headquarters and Pendine site as possible over the coming months and years, because, as far as Smith is concerned, this isn't a solution for Wales or the UK, it's a solution that could solve a global problem and give developing nations a helpful leg up, too.
And on the journey back through the picturesque Welsh countryside to London, I couldn't help but wonder, putting their allegiances to one side, what the major feed producers really think of Dragon's worm-enhanced feed and the results it's getting.
