American Unagi has officially broken ground on its state-of-the-art eel aquaculture facility in Waldoboro, Maine, U.S.A., according to a recent report from The Lincoln County News.
The company’s founder and president, Sara Rademaker, has spent seven years planning the USD 10 million (EUR 8.4 million), 27,000-square-foot facility.
“I was telling the guys when they were pouring the concrete that I’ve been thinking about this moment for seven years,” Rademaker said told the newspaper. “It’s exciting being able to finally see a vision that I had for an aquaculture facility here happening.”
The groundbreaking occurred on 28 July, coinciding with Unagi Day in Japan.
Rademaker said her company plans to purchase 600 pounds of glass elvers annually.
"[That's] a blip of what the Maine fishery is, so there’s definitely opportunity to grow,” she said.
This year, Maine’s elver fishery quota was set at 9,688 pounds.
Once the new facility – which was designed by The Netherlands’ ACE Aquaculture Consultant Engineering – is at-scale, its adult eel output is expected to reach around 500,000 pounds, according to Rademaker.
The facility should be operational by the 2022 elver season, according to Rademaker. American Unagi hopes to expand the reach of the local eel industry with its new operation, Rademaker said.
“It increases the economic value of the fishery to the state, but it hasn’t always been this valuable,” she told The Lincoln County News. “And it takes a lot of work to manage fisheries so there are a lot of states that don’t have the resources or really the need because their economies are based on other things. It’s not an easy business to build. Farming fish takes a certain skill-set, understanding, and a lot of time to put together a facility that’s properly designed [and] properly permitted.”
Fourteen jobs will come to Waldoboro courtesy of the new facility.
“We looked at a facility size that made sense for the community, the fishery and the market. Everything has been very thoughtful with how we built this first facility,” Rademaker said, adding that a second site isn’t out of the question in the future.
American Unagi aims to put eels back on the menu for sustainability-minded chefs, Rademaker said.
“A lot of people have recognized that the imported eels are not sustainable, that there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Rademaker said. “And because of that there’s a certain kind of chef that had taken it off their menu. Now they have an opportunity to get something local where I can tell them it came from this river, it was fished by this person, and the fishery is regulated. They love the fish. They just wanted a better source.”
