Project description
Advanced technology for safe salmon aquaculture
One major threat facing today's salmon aquaculture is the rapid growth of sea lice. The parasite has harmful effects on fish health and welfare and it seriously affects the economy of salmon aquaculture. It is estimated that the growth of sea lice salmon caused a significant decrease in the harvest in the Atlantic, threatening the sustainability of the sector. The EU-funded DeBug project proposes a new technology that mechanically delouses salmon. The pioneering technology removes up to 100 % of the parasite. It is environmentally and salmon friendly since it doesn't use chemicals or medicines. The project will develop the mechanical delousing system by introducing a new web system to test the technology in real market conditions.
Objective
Sea lice are considered one of the greatest challenges in salmon farming, posing a detrimental effect on marine ecosystems, fish health and welfare, and consequently threatening the sustainability of the aquaculture industry. In last years, there has been an alarming decrease in harvest quantity of Atlantic salmon due to sea lice, and the worldwide supply of salmon fell almost 10%. Norway, the largest salmon producer in the world, decreased the total harvest quantity by 63,000 tons whole fish equivalent in the period 2016-2017. Scotland reports a shocking annual growth in the share of sea lice affected farms, which increased from 28% to 49% in only one year .
DeBug is a pioneering technology for mechanical delousing of salmon, a breakthrough for sea lice removal that removes up to 100% of salmon sea lice without chemicals and medical treatments, it is a modular system, which can easily be extended to reach a capacity of +270 tonnes and is extremely friendly with both salmons and the environment.
The consortia are composed by Green Sea Lice Solutions & Skamik, two Norwegian companies with years of experience in the salmon and sea lice removal methods. In 2012, Skamik developed the first prototype of a mechanical de-lousing system, which is now patented and sold worldwide. The objective of this project is to further improve the Skamik de-lousing system by including a new sub-system developed by Green Sea Lice Solutions, pilot the technology in real market conditions and start to commercialise it globally. Our projection clearly demonstrates the commercial potential of our solution, which recoups the anticipated investment within the end of 2nd year of commercialisation. The current projected amount of expected sales considers reaching 9% market share of salmon treatment on a Total Addressable Market (TAM) of 2.3M tons of target salmon produced.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
4514 Mandal
Norway
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.