Elevated economic and political upheaval and the looming threat of tariffs have started hindering investments in the blue food economy, with backers of start-ups finding later-stage funders are edging away from the aquaculture innovation space.
Speaking at the Blue Food Innovation Summit, held in London from 8 to 9 April 2025, Aqua-Spark Chief Portfolio Officer Maria Velkova said there’s a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the aquaculture industry at present – particularly among investors. Such a backdrop tends to make things more difficult, with people becoming increasingly risk-averse and more prone to freezing up.
“But this makes our role even more important, because we should continue fostering innovations and working together to make sure that whatever is going on around the world is not stopping us in what we want to achieve,” she said.
While it’s too soon to know what the full impact of the tariffs first introduced and then later paused by U.S. President Donald Trump will be, there’s likely to be significant changes in investment deal flows and the types of innovations that are invested in, The Yield Lab Asia-Pacific Managing Director and Co-founder Claire Pribula said.
With her investment company “squarely-focused on aquaculture” in the Asian Pacific, Pribula is expecting the U.S. tariffs to have a significant effect on the region, highlighting that the investment dynamics are sure to change dramatically in sectors such as India’s shrimp industry, which is the top supplier to the United States, with 40 percent of its shrimp exports going directly to the market.
Indonesia and other producing countries are in a very similar boat, and companies that are already in the space are going to have to re-adjust, she said.
“Tariffs are rarely a good thing in international trade, especially with the U.S. being a net importer of seafood – those trade flows are already being disrupted,” Rabo Ventures Executive Director Jeroen van der Staay remarked.
Rabo Ventures predominantly invests in companies at the early-stage. These are typically sourcing and selling locally, and are therefore unlikely to be greatly affected by the changes. However, the longer-term outlook for these ventures is a lot more uncertain, and the likelihood is that once they reach a certain level of maturity, they will be impacted, van der Staay said...
