Atlantic Sapphire, which is planning a massive land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) in Miami, Florida, U.S.A., is on track to complete the first phase of the project in July.
The facility, which will be used to grow Atlantic salmon, is one of the largest RAS farms planned in the world with an anticipated yield of 220,000 metric tons (MT) by 2030. The initial phase will have a capacity of “just” 10,000 MT head-on gutted, and is slated to be harvested around the time phase one is complete, according to Lola Navarro, sustainability, community engagement and press manager for Atlantic Sapphire.
“We’re still on track to have it ready by July, everything will be completely commissioned and finished,” Navarro told SeafoodSource. “From there, we’re just going to be farming, without having to be building at the same time, so that’s very exciting.”
Farming salmon in a new RAS while also trying to build the project at the same time has been challenging, she added.
“You have the challenges of being in a construction site, and at the same time we have to deal with the aquaculture side,” Navarro said
Despite those challenges, she said the company has already had a taste of the salmon, and anticipates an initial production of 5,000 MT of head-on gutted salmon. That salmon, Navarro said, has already found a planned market.
As phase one is complete, phase two of the project will begin some time in 2020, with no set date. The plan is to take lessons learned from the construction of phase one and apply them to phase two.
“That’s one of the advantages of having had this process split into three different phases, you have the opportunity to optimize between one phase and the other,” Navarro said. “That’s going to define the construction of the second phase.”
As the project nears the end of its first phase and its first harvest, Navarro acknowledged that the company will be under the spotlight given the dozens of similar projects planned worldwide.
“The reality is, we’ve been doing this for years in Denmark,” she said. “For us, this is not the pressure of ‘are we going to do this or not.’ We have done this in the past, we’ve had our operation running in Denmark for years now.”
Those operations have proven the concept, and now it’s a matter of delivering on the company’s vision for its land-based salmon production.
“We are focusing on delivering the business plan and doing what we are doing every day,” Navarro said. “We have the expertise in place, we have the years of experience, the years of research development, we know what we’re doing.”
Photo courtesy of Atlantic Sapphire
