Wuchuan plots “world’s biggest offshore fish farm”

A Chinese offshore aquaculture equipment maker has gone a step further with its ambitions with a new agreement with a local manufacturing specialist to build what’s billed as the world's largest and most capable deep-water fish farming fishery in the South China Sea.

The “Guangdong Shantou Deep Distant-water Intelligent Fishery Platform Project Manufacturing Agreement” was signed in late August in Shantou between Hubei Ocean Engineering Equipment Research Institute (part of the Wuchuan Heavy Industry Group), Guangzhou Zhong Yu Science and Technology Co., and Hainan-based Zhong Chuan Heavy Industry Sea Equipment Co. (part of the state-owned shipbuilding firm CSIC).

The agreement states the project will occupy a water body of 700,000 cubic meters (700 cubic kilometers) and “will be three times the world's first Norwegian fishery.” The platforms will be placed in the waters near Nan'ao Island, on the border between Fujian and Guangdong provinces in the southwestern Taiwan Strait.

Aside from the aquaculture platform, the project agreement includes the manufacturing of vessels for transport of feed and finished fish as well as processing facilities for feed and fish. 

According to the agreement, the platforms will be 200 meters by 50 meters wide and 45 meters deep – the world’s largest such facility, according to Wuchuan. The dimensions are similar those of the company’s flagship product, a cage made for Norwegian firm Ocean Farming, a subsidiary of the SalMar Group. That system was launched in June 2017.

Announcing the successful completion at the time (that system was tugged to the Frohavet salmon farm off the coast of Norway), Qingdao Wuchuan said it hoped to produce similar rigs for domestic Chinese clients. 

Image courtesy of Rolls Royce

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