Ocean Perfect CEO Andrew Lively said it has dialed in its method of shipping live shellfish inside a 40-foot shipping container, and has partnered with European logistics firm Delanchy, a major player in transport and logistics of fresh produce, to show off the new technology during Seafood Expo Global.
Ocean Perfect has designed a 40ft shipping container which hosts a system that will keep a range of different shellfish – including oysters, king crab, snow crab, lobsters, and more – alive for up to 21 days with no loss of weight at a 1 percent mortality rate. Lively told SeafoodSource that the new system is also connected via a satellite network to an application called JUMO, allowing whoever is using the container to remotely monitor every aspect of the container, including CO2 levels, temperature, whether the system is running or not, and more from a phone or laptop.
“You will get an alarm if there’s any challenge with the system,” Lively said. “It’s a two-way system, so you’ll be able to adjust anything that you want, so if somebody turns it off you can turn it back on.”
Lively said the company has done a number of trials with the system, demonstrating it is able to hold European lobsters for 21 days with less than one percent mortality. Ocean Perfect has already been operating with king crab, and recently completed a test for snow crab with a mortality rate of 3 percent. Another key factor for Ocean Perfect's system is it can ship a number of different species at the same time – so a container could have oysters, lobsters, and king crab in separate modules all inside one shipping container.
Lively said a company could, for example, take out a few modules of lobster to serve an event fresh product one day, and leave some of the lobsters inside the system to be kept fresh for a different event the next week.
The goal of the Ocean Perfect container is to reduce the cost of shipping live seafood while simultaneously improving the quality of the product when it gets to its destination. Because the system has been designed to mimic the optimum environment for the shellfish it contains, it arrives at full weight and in peak condition – and great flavor.
“All of it adds up to a reduced shipping cost,” Lively said.
The shipping process also uses no packaging, less labor, and gives more flexibility on shipping dates compared to current methods...
