Chinese tanker converted into mobile salmon farm

Editor/Mohamed Shihab

offers alternative model to traditional land-based operations

AChinese company has transformed a nearly 20-year-old cargo vessel into a mobile salmon farm in a process that offers significant cost savings compared to operating a land-based salmon farm.

Alan Cook, who has served as the COO of New Zealand King Salmon and the managing director of Mowi Canada East, among several other roles in the seafood industry, told SeafoodSource that the Zhedai Yuyang 60001 may be just one of many similar vessels to come that offer an easily replicable alternative to land-based fish farming.

“These vessels are far more cost-effective to develop than land-based salmon farms – likely half the cost per kilogram of production – so if the land-based guys can appeal to shareholders, I'm not sure why these projects wouldn't,” he said.

Not only does it save on operating costs, but Cook said that the cost of converting a tanker like Zhedai Yuyang 60001 is around 70 percent lower than the cost of constructing a land-based salmon recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) project, suggesting the figures represent a “direct attack” on the “cost‑and‑time floor” set by Western salmon producers.

“I think what the Chinese are doing has lots of historical precedent and, to the best of my knowledge, uses mainly off-the-shelf technology, but the combination of the elements is fairly out-of-the-box thinking compared to the current development paradigm in the salmon industry,” he said. “The kinds of bulk tankers they are using are currently operating in every ocean on the planet; as a working platform, they are tried and true and supported by a very mature network of financial groups, operations support, port services, etc.”