The equipment and materials slated to be installed in AquaBounty Technologies’ Pioneer, Ohio, U.S.A.-based salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility are up for auction now that the company has given up on the project.
New Mill Capital has listed a 4 February start date for the sale of AquaBounty’s assets related to its planned Ohio RAS. Equipment on offer includes HVAC systems; 40 disc filters; 30 Innovasea fingerling, pre-growout, and growout tanks; and a 200,000-square-foot pre-engineered metal building.
The auction marks the end of a four-year saga for AquaBounty, which at one point was projecting new farms every two years but failed to build one.
The company raised millions of dollars through multiple common stock offerings as part of its goal of building a salmon farm in North America. After raising money, AquaBounty first announced its plans to expand into Pioneer in 2021 after its earlier plans to expand into Mayfield, Kentucky, U.S.A., failed to pan out. At the time, the company was projecting a USD 200 million (EUR 195 million) price tag for a 479,000-square-foot facility capable of farming 10,000 metric tons (MT) of salmon a year.
The company broke ground in April 2022, but just over a year later, it was forced to pause construction as cost estimates ballooned. The originally projected USD 200 million jumped to as much as USD 395 million (EUR 386 million) by the time it broke ground. Then-CEO Sylvia Wulf said in June 2023 that yet more cost estimates were “significantly above” that estimate.
Despite the high costs, the company doubled down on the facility in February 2024 and sold its functional Indiana, U.S.A-based farm – which it had purchased from Bell Fish Company in 2017 – for a USD 4.5 million (EUR 4.4 million) loss. That effort ultimately failed to pay off, and the company announced it was ceasing all salmon farming in December 2024 and then-CEO David Melbourne resigned.
“AquaBounty will immediately begin to wind down its Bay Fortune operation, its only remaining operating farm, including the culling of all remaining fish and a reduction of substantially all personnel over the course of the next several weeks,” AquaBounty CFO and Interim CEO David Frank said in the announcement.
Now, the company’s assets are being sold piecemeal. A spokesperson with Gordon Brothers – which is auctioning the equipment in partnership with New Mill Capital – told SeafoodSource the equipment is unused and is being stored at the farm site in Pioneer and in dry storage in Indianapolis, Indiana.
