SeaArk, the IT-driven shrimp farming company, has won a second international order for its technology. This one is worth R70 million and will see SeaArk develop a commercial pilot plant at an existing open-pond prawn farming facility near the port of Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia.
The pilot project will establish the commercial viability of SeaArk's advanced closed pond technology in farming a Mediterranean brown shrimp variety known as panaeus indicus.
The Coega-based aqua-business signed a similar deal with a Chinese company in December.
"In Coega, we are successfully growing a pacific white shrimp variety known as panaeus vannemai, while in Saudi Arabia we will be farming a species never before grown in a hi-tech closed system," says SeaArk president Dave Wills.
"Together with our Saudi partners, we aim to demonstrate that our innovative mix of science and technology has the ability to grow the Mediterranean prawns they are already farming faster, with a lower food consumption rate, with greater densities, and higher barriers to infection and loss than in the open ponds they are currently using," Wills adds.
The technology
SeaArk's technology combines closed specially designed ponds and computer-driven control systems with advanced biological science and, according to Wills, is already dramatically changing the way prawn and shrimp are produced around the world.
As with the company's Zhanjiang (China) project, many of SeaArk's patented processes in the Jeddah pilot project will be run remotely from Coega using Web-based applications.
Among others, water quality and temperature, feed consistency, and plant biosecurity will be monitored online by South African technicians working around the clock at the Coega research and development centre. The Jeddah pilot plant will be built and managed by two other Bosasa companies, project management company BuildAll, and Sondolo IT.
Wills enthuses that "what traditional open-pond prawn farms across the world do in three to four months, SeaArk's technology is able to achieve in 10 to 11 weeks. The company's technology has shown the ability to grow a prawn to the same size as competitors two to three times faster."
Making a difference
"The agreement with the Al Faulk Group for the Saudi Arabian pilot plant is another huge vote of confidence in the technology we have brought to market maturity in our Coega plant," says SeaArk CEO Gavin Watson.
"For the second time following our partnership with the China Direct group, an international roll-out is making a huge contribution to the future of the Coega IDZ and the Eastern Cape economy, with a very direct and positive effect on the lives of thousands of families in the surrounding communities, particularly Motherwell."
When it is in full production by 2014, SeaArk Africa's Coega plant will have the capacity to produce 20 000 tons of prawns per year, most of which are expected to be exported.
An economic impact study has shown that besides creating 11 000 largely semi-skilled and unskilled direct jobs when the project has grown to full maturity in six years, SeaArk's Coega facility has the ability to generate 88 000 indirect employment opportunities in a range of support services and industries ranging from transport to catering for the workforce, security, and construction and maintenance.
Besides 1 000 jobs for women in the prawn processing facility to be built as part of SeaArk's 11 000 job roll-out, there will be significant numbers of skilled posts for laboratory technicians, marine biologists, software specialists and engineers.
SeaArk Africa's parent company, Bosasa, is a diversified and unlisted broad-based black economic empowered company with a national footprint.
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