Paisley, Scotland-based biotechnology firm WellFish Tech has announced a new partnership with Andfjord Salmon and has renewed its existing partnership with Bue Salmon, both of which are land-based salmon producers in Norway.
Bue Salmon is currently working on what it says will be the largest land-based salmon facility in Norway, while Andfjord Salmon is already actively operating a flow-through salmon aquaculture facility in Kvalnes.
"Andfjord Salmon have built something genuinely exceptional at Kvalnes, and they are asking exactly the right question – not just how do we maintain these results but how do we understand them well enough to be certain we can sustain them at scale,” WellFish Tech CEO Charlie Granfelt said in a release.
WellFish Tech’s “WellFish Predict” monitoring program gives quantitative data on the status of fish inside salmon farms. Its blood sampling methods recently gained regulatory clearance from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (Mattilsynet), allowing the company to use its tool in Norway, which can provide advanced mortality forecasting.
"For us, it is about using data to make better decisions,” Bue Salmon Fish Health and Quality Consultant Heidi Johansen Nedberg said in a release. "The continuous analyses give us an earlier and clearer picture of how the fish are doing, and that enables us to work proactively rather than reactively."
WellFish Tech said its predictive models are useful for both recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) and flow-through aquaculture operations where giving an early biological signal can allow companies to take action to prevent negative outcomes.
“We have always believed that good outcomes for fish health are inseparable from good outcomes for the business,” Andfjord Salmon CEO Martin Rasmussen said. “Our survival and growth data demonstrates what is possible when you give salmon the right environment, but we want to go further. Blood biochemistry gives us a direct window into the physiological state of our fish that no environmental sensor or behavioral observation can provide.”
Rasmussen said the partnership with WellFish Tech will give Andfjord the “most precise and robust data available.”
“We are looking forward to working with Martin and the team as they build out one of the most ambitious land-based salmon operations in the world,” Granfelt said.
