New U.S.-Georgian joint fish farm venture set to make a splash for the country’s aquaculture sector

Georgia’s water resources include around 860 freshwater lakes, more than 26,000 rivers, and 43 artificial reservoirs and around 325 kilometers of coastline – so why is the latest foreign salmon aquaculture investment project a land-based one? This is Noble Salmon, which is being set up by the Nasdaq-listed and Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, AquaBounty Technologies, partnering with Georgia’s Benish Group that is run by Meni Benish, the co-founder of engineering and real estate development group Archi.

The Georgian salmon farm will be the first international venture for the U.S. company, which has spent tens of millions of dollars already on developing fast-growing, economic-to-rear genetically modified Atlantic salmon. The company says that its systems and the genetic modification enable “70% more harvest output while using 25% less feed.”

The answer to why-on-land is that rearing salmon in tanks of circulating water is deemed better for the fish – both those being reared (because it avoids the oft criticized conventional farming system of river or sea borne floating cages) and the wild fish populations. Thanks to the controlled environment in the tanks, says AquaBounty, growth and welfare can be assured through management of the temperature, the water quality, feeds, and other environmental parameters. So, while there are a number of fish projects under development in Georgia in response to the government campaign for more production, this one is attracting a lot of attention.

There’s still more here that ticks the “sustainability” regulations that are increasing on food production globally – the facilities can be built close to consumer markets, reducing transport costs and carbon footprint; there is less pollution discharge in the marine environment; biosecurity can be enhanced; and, the modified fish are not in danger of escaping into the wild.

AquaBounty is currently investing heavily to increase its scale of production at a large plant in Ohio with the capacity to produce 10,000 metric tons of fish each year. Production is due to start next year. There will be a hatchery, early-rearing facilities, and tanks of circulating water in which the salmon grow. But U.S. fishing research reports of Georgia’s interest in expanding production, its rising domestic demand – thanks to tourism and the influx of Russians and Ukrainians, plus the world shortage of fish, were among the inspirations for the foray abroad with Noble Salmon. The Georgian Ministry of Agriculture has been supporting projects to increase local fish production for several years now.

Other fish farming ventures in Georgia

Another one of the few companies with a land-based system and circulatory water tanks is Guriafish, which was set up three years ago to produce Norwegian salmon and trout. It operates on the beach at Tskaltsminda in Guria, which makes regular access to clean sea water easy. It announced last summer that it was ready to launch its fish on the consumer market.

Salmon continues to be extremely popular globally, with the market forecasted to grow at over 8% a year for the next five years to reach $50 billion by 2029. According to the U.S. research group IMARC, Atlantic salmon accounts for the majority of the market share because of its wide cultivation in aquaculture due to favorable growth characteristics, its adaptability to farming environments, and its popularity among health-conscious consumers.

At the consumer level, salmon continues to be a “winning” fish worldwide, according to agriculture banking specialists at the Dutch international bank Rabobank. In its “Global Aquaculture Update 1H 2024: The New Normal,” it states that salmon is expected to remain the most profitable aquaculture sector in the first half of this year. Senior analyst at Rabobank Gorjan Nikolik explained that “salmon farmers can expect strong profitability due to the relatively high prices (albeit slightly lower than in the first half of 2023).” The salmon market internationally was thought to have reached 3.6 million tons last year, and looking forward, growth is expected to be 3.1% per year over the next eight years.

Another Georgian fish project, announced by the University of Idaho last month, is one where scientists from its Aquaculture Research Institute (ARI) are leading an effort to establish rainbow trout production in Georgia on the coast of Adjara. The Georgian government has approved a draft resolution to allocate eight locations on the coastline of the Adjara, Samegrelo, and Guria regions in the west for farming of fish and shellfish. The Georgian Law on Aquaculture only allows aquaculture production in designated zones approved by the government and within special economic zones. The principal recommendations for aquaculture zones were prepared in “close cooperation” with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Trout are popular in Georgia, but, says the University of Idaho, “while the country possesses the natural resources and much of the infrastructure necessary to scale up its domestic fish production, it lacks sufficient expertise in aquaculture.” Currently it imports most of its trout from Turkey.

The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) identified trout production as “an agricultural sector in Georgia with tremendous growth potential,” and its officials contacted ARI director Brian Small to lead the Caucasus Agricultural Development Initiative (CADI) — a project teaching modern aquaculture practices to Georgia’s existing fish producers while also preparing native Georgians to become aquaculture trainers.

“That speaks really well to the reputation that we have here, nationally as well as internationally, that they quickly identified ARI as the go-to trout experts,” said Jacob Bledsoe, an Idaho University assistant professor and aquaculture research specialist who serves on the CADI team. He added: “The Georgian Ministry of Agriculture would like to have stronger rainbow trout production, supplying whole-body, head-on, gutted trout to serve the tourism industry.”

The project is working with the Georgian government program Farmer of the Future to develop short courses for aspiring fish farmers. It is also providing data loggers, which will be placed at certain fish farms to remotely monitor water quality over the course of a year. Interns from a newly created Aquaculture Extension Center associated with Georgia’s Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University will travel to farms and oversee data collection. And in the last few weeks, a group of officials from the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture of Georgia spent time at ARI’s facility learning about the U.S. trout industry.

Global demand

Globally, fish production is forecasted to rise in all continents except Africa, and fish consumption is projected to reach 21.2 kilograms per capita (up from 20.4 kilograms per capita in the base 2020-2022 period), says a joint study on ten-year growth prospects for agriculture from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). By 2032, aquaculture production is projected to account for 55% of total fish production, compared to 50% in the base period.

However, the study also suggests that the global rate of increase in demand and supply is slowing. It also states that the vast majority (96%) of growth in global fish production will originate from increasing aquaculture production. This anticipated slowdown in aquaculture production growth, it states, “will be mainly caused by continued lower productivity gains related to environmental regulations, diseases related to high stocking densities, and a reduced availability of optimal production locations.”

China, in particular, is expected to experience a substantial slowing of growth in farmed fish production due to regulations aimed at increasing the sustainability of the sector and targeting growth in species favored by domestic consumers. Nevertheless, China will continue dominating world aquaculture production with an expected share of 56% in 2032, representing a marginal decline.

Despite these slowdown concerns, overall global growth in consumption of fish over the last 60 years has been phenomenal. “Since 1961, the annual global growth in fish consumption has been twice as high as population growth, demonstrating that the fisheries and aquaculture sector is crucial in meeting the FAO’s goal of a world without hunger and malnutrition,” says FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva.

Meanwhile Georgian supermarkets provide visual evidence of the local growth in demand and supply, although up-to-date figures on the size of the local consumer market are elusive. The range of fish on the slab at Carrefour, for example, is expanding rapidly and beginning to match that to be found at the group’s Mediterranean outlets. While this reflects local fish farming output, it is also down to the entrance to the Georgian market of international importers, such as Ukraine’s Klion Group.

At this rate, Georgian culinary writers will soon be expanding the rather small fish section in their cookery books!