Japanese businessman Tetsuro Sogo is painstakingly experimenting with land-based salmon-farming of a type that hasn’t been seen in Western Europe or North America.
He’ll be using tap water, added salt and the bacteria-based sewage treatment technology pioneered by his firm, FRD Japan, out of Sataima, writes The Japan Times. Patented technology deploys bacteria to consume the ammonia, so energy-intense recirculated aquaculture systems, or RAS, are not used.
While two other land-based facilities in Japan are understood to use RAS variations or flow-through river systems, they’re said to struggle with the usual high-costs.
“We’ll be the world’s first successful case for this type of land-based salmon-farming if we can turn a profit,” Sogo was quoted as saying.
“We’re looking at the possibility of delivering fresh salmon (to Asia via technology exports).”
A test run in 2017 is understood to have produced one tonne of salmon that was immediately sold to a major Tokyo supermarket. By July 2018, Sogo hopes to have the capacity for 30 t and by 2020, 1,500 of sushi-salmon from a larger facility.
