AquaBounty Technologies is planning to sell off its Rollo Bay salmon egg production and broodstock facilities in Prince Edward Island, Canada, to address the company’s cash requirements.
AquaBounty CEO David Melbourne said the move is part of the company working to secure funding for its near- and long-term needs so that it can pursue its growth strategy.
“The Rollo Bay farm was purchased and developed to support an expansion plan for five large land-based grow-out farms,” Melbourne said. “Since we will not require the egg output from the Rollo Bay farm in the near- to mid-term time frame and since we will retain sufficient egg production capacity for our Ohio farm from our hatchery in Bay Fortune, we have determined that the Rollo Bay farm can be sold at this time to resolve the Company’s immediate cash requirements, without impacting our long-term strategy.”
AquaBounty acquired the former Atlantic Sea Smolt facility in 2016 for USD 700,000 (EUR 634,000) in cash funded from the company’s existing resources. At the time, the company said the location was to be used to raise conventional Atlantic salmon to provide eggs to transfer to its Bay Fortune location in advance of scaling up production of its AquAdvantage Salmon, a genetically engineered product.
Since that time, the company has been expanding the facility to increase production capacity of broodstock, eggs, and fry to meet increasing demand for salmon eggs in North America.
The additional eggs would have also been needed to meet AquaBounty’s originally ambitious plans. As recently as 2022, the company said its plans included building a new land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility for its salmon every two years. The company announced plans for a RAS facility in Pioneer, Ohio, in July 2021 and broke ground on the facility in April 2022.
The company had also told SeafoodSource about plans to build new RAS sites overseas and that it had gained approval for field trials of its genetically engineered salmon in China.
Those aspirations did not come to fruition, however, and the company pulled back on its plans for China in February 2023. Then, in June 2023, the company announced it needed to pause construction on its Pioneer facility due to rising construction costs.
Most recently in June 2024, AquaBounty sold its Albany, Indiana, U.S.A.-based RAS facility. In an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said it sold the facility to Superior Fresh for USD 9.5 million (EUR 8.6 million) – down from the USD 14 million (EUR 12.7 million) it paid for the facility in 2017.
The sale of that farm was, much like the planned sale of its Rollo Bay facility, intended to help solve a cash crunch. The company’s losses in Q2 2024 spiked to over USD 50 million (EUR 45 million) due to a non-cash impairment charge, and the company’s cash, cash equivalents, and restricted cash totaled just USD 700,000 (EUR 634,000) on 30 June, down from USD 9.2 million (EUR 8.3 million) on 31 December 2023.
Melbourne said that AquaBounty is continuing to pursue additional funding to secure the cash requirements needed in the coming months.
