July 18, 2018 — Finance can “drive change on the water,” according to Neil Sims at Kampachi Worldwide Holdings. But for aquaculture projects, it’s still hard to come by.
Speaking at the SeaWeb Seafood Summit in Barcelona, Spain in June, Sims told the story of his company. He said it took 10 years to raise enough funds to initiate his marine aquaculture project in Hawaii. There was a temptation to put one pen out while he raised the rest of the cash.
“But that would be throwing money down the rat hole,” he said. “In mariculture you need scale, you need to have the cash together.”
There’s plenty of money waiting to invest in aquaculture, according to Trip O’Shea, vice president at New York, U.S.A.-based investment house Encourage Capital. But first the sector needs to offer would-be investors data and models to profitability.
“There are several pillars of sustainable development but where is financial sustainability on the list? Otherwise how do we get it off the ground?” he said. “We need a set of principles for aquaculture investment, so that investors can quickly understand what to benchmark to. Right now there are so many metrics quoted. We have to compare apples to apples.”
O’Shea cited feed conversion ratios as an example.