Tens of thousands of fish swim at a rapid pace in a water tank of Kingfish Zeeland in Kats, twelve meters in diameter and four and a half meters deep. The tropical warm water is pumped around at breakneck speed to imitate ocean currents. A can of fish food sprays a dose of food into the water every few seconds. The school is then disturbed for a moment: where the food lands, the fish dive under, on and through each other looking for a bite, before continuing the group swimming. The water pumps and aerosols make a loud noise, and a pungent, salty smell rises from the basin.
Thirty-two such tanks, each with between twenty and forty thousand fish, are located in this hangar-sized shed, on the Eastern Scheldt in Zeeland. Here Kingfish Zeeland keeps fifteen hundred tons of fish in one of the few commercial fish farms on land, without the use of hormones, antibiotics and vaccinations. Every month, one hundred thousand fish are stunned with an electric shock and placed in an ice water bath: the harvest. After processing in the slaughterhouse, they are transported to chic restaurants and expensive supermarkets in Europe and the United States.
The kingfish, a fatty white fish with few bones and a meat-like structure, is a popular luxury product in Japanese and Italian kitchens, says founder and CEO Ohad Maiman (45). Previously, the fish was imported from Japan or Australia. Expensive, environmentally unfriendly and difficult to keep fresh. Land cultivation is a godsend, but it involves high production costs.
Until 1980, almost all fish in the world came from wild catch. As demand for seafood grew, the global fish population shrank at an alarming rate. Wild catch was regulated and supply stagnated, until marine fish farms (large cages at sea) took over some of the demand.
But now marine farming is also reaching its limits. The ecological consequences are too great, also for fish exporting countries such as Canada and Denmark. During marine farming, a large amount of disruptive substances enter the ecosystem, such as food, antibiotics and chemicals. Farmed fish can also escape and mate with the wild fish population, leading to a weakening of the genes. As a result, hardly any new licenses for marine breeding are issued. While the demand for fish continues to grow, the supply stagnates.
Ohad Maiman, a descendant of a very wealthy Israeli family, saw the need for a new approach. After three years with the elite forces of the Israeli army, he traveled through South America and Asia. It led to a milder worldview. He was going to study business but chose photography and philosophy at Columbia University in New York, followed by a career as a photographer.
Profitable in theory
In 2010, he joined the family business, where he focused on investments and business development in infrastructure, petrochemicals and agriculture, among others. In that position he came across a new technology, recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS).
Polluted seawater can be sterilized and replenished with oxygen over and over again, so that a water supply can last many times longer than normal. RAS makes land-based fish farming possible, and in theory even profitable. Maiman saw a way to increase the global seafood supply, but the board of the family business did not think theoretical profits were enough. The concept gripped Maiman. In 2014 he met a breeder from Zeeland who ran his breed tests with the exotic kingfish. Together they can make the technology profitable.
Kingfish farming on land fulfills all the conditions for starting a business for Maiman. Kingfish is a product that is barely available on the market and that is pricey enough to make the expensive land cultivation profitable. But with agricultural cultivation all kinds of difficulties arise. ‘You maintain the fish for at least twelve months. During that time, nothing can go wrong. If the pump stops, the electricity goes out or the oxygen level drops, you’re out of luck.’ But the pollution problem could be overcome. Maiman: ‘It’s like the difference between a meadow and a greenhouse. In a greenhouse you control what comes in and what you emit.’
Better for ecosystems
In 2015, Maiman left the family business, found ten investors, (“friends and family”), and raised 6 million euros. He borrowed another 12 million euros from the bank and set up the first few tanks. The harvests turned out to be more abundant than expected. With those results, he nabbed major strategic investors such as Nutreco. ‘Once it was proven that it was possible, it was a matter of scaling up.’
That worked. In 2021, the turnover doubled from five to ten million. At the beginning of April, the company closed a second major investment round, raising 75 million euros. Maiman wants to build more tanks and increase production from 1,500 to 3,000 tons.
Farming fish on land is better for ecosystems, but the energy consumption is enormous. Solar panels absorb 4 percent of the electricity requirement, Kingfish Zeeland buys the rest of the electricity green.
Maiman understands that people are critical of his fish farming. ‘We supply an animal product, some people are against that by definition. But overfishing, long-distance imports and offshore farming are much more damaging.’ And, Maiman argues, kingfish is a schooling fish. They swim those eternal circles in the wild just as well. With optimal temperature, flow, incidence of light and water quality in a closed environment, antibiotics and hormones are unnecessary. “It’s the only way to meet the growing demand for seafood.”
In a separate room in the shed, finger-length fish of a few weeks old swim through the warm water. Eventually, these fingerlings, as they are so endearingly called in English, are on plates in expensive Japanese restaurants in London and New York. But first they will swim an almost endless amount of laps in the shed on the Oosterschelde.
- Company: Kingfish Zeeland
- Where: Kats
- Since: 2015
- Number of employees: 112