A strategic partnership between Swiss Blue Salmon and Billon Aquaculture.
Switzerland imports about 98% of the fish it consumes. This arrives by land or air, which significantly increases the carbon footprint of the country’s seafood consumption.
Swiss Blue Salmon and Billon Aquaculture have recently formed a strategic partnership to establish “the world’s smartest RAS farm” in the province of Glarus, which could replace up to 8% of the salmon imported into the country.
Smart Fish Farm
This innovative land-based salmon farm will use state-of-the-art recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) and cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud solutions, digitization and automation.
Sune Moeller, CTO of Swiss Blue Salmon, even describes it as an innovation wheel: “From the fish farmers’ perspective, we create a lot of data that is uploaded to a cloud-based platform, from where we can share all the raw data with strategic partners like Billund. In turn, Billund will be able to analyze this data and come up with new ideas and solutions to ensure that both remain at the forefront of the industry.
Local origin
Rudolf Ryf, founder and CEO of Swiss Blue Salmon, commented that one of his original motivations for starting the company was to address the seafood trade deficit in Switzerland, where almost all fish is imported.
“We have good water in the country and I saw an opportunity to build a Swiss aquaculture industry and reduce the import level from 98 percent,” he says.
The company also hopes to provide neighboring communities with guided tours of the observation deck at the facility.
“We want to be as open and transparent as possible. Adults and children will be able to come and visit our facility and learn about the process of land-based salmon farming. In this way, we will be able to show them the high level of animal welfare and hygiene standards we have to meet in order to provide a first-class product,” Ryf said.
In addition, the Swiss company hopes to strengthen its ties with local universities to contribute to the creation and hiring of experts for the project and its future agricultural operations.
In addition, Moeller added that by producing locally, “it gives us a unique opportunity to sell sushi-grade fish to local Swiss restaurants that will be able to serve the fish to their customers within hours of harvesting on the farm.
Sustainable production
In terms of sustainability, the company focuses on low energy consumption due to longer shelf life, upcycling of processing sidestreams, reducing transportation, and ultimately reducing food waste in stores.
Since Switzerland relies primarily on hydropower, Swiss Blue Salmon uses green energy. However, the company is also investing in several energy-saving technologies, Ryf says: “Unlike many other farms, we are able to use passive cooling of the lake water at 6-8°C, while an efficient heat recovery system will be used especially in winter. Likewise, we aim to install solar panels on the roof, which will cover 15-25% of our electricity consumption.
Moeller adds that the sludge produced during the production process will either be converted into fertilizer or used in a local biogas plant.
“In addition, we want to use 100 percent of the fish and turn what would otherwise be considered waste into pharmaceutical-grade products, food for human consumption or pet food,” he said.
Meanwhile, Bjarne Hald Olsen, COO and business and development manager at Billund Aquaculture, said, “We are delighted to enter into this strategic partnership with Swiss Blue Salmon. This is an important step toward building a sustainable Swiss aquaculture industry,” he said.