Aquatic AI looks to develop WA marron industry

Owners of Aquatic AI, Michael Storey and Andrew Walker have thought outside of the pond to find a way to scale up the beautiful Western Australian marron.

According to the 2017 New Opportunities in New and Emerging Agricultural Industries Australia report put together by AgriFutures, marron are a top food source with huge opportunities.

After seeking a new business opportunity to sink their teeth into, it was an industry opportunity too good to refuse.

"The AgriFutures paper had listed marron as one of the best opportunities," Mr Walker said.

"But that paper talked about how it was only a 60 tonne a year sector, which is tiny compared to western rock lobster, that's how our curiosity started."

So they went hunting for the answer to why the industry was so small and continuously found the demand was there, but farmers were unable to scale up.

"We spent a good six months trying to make sure that it wasn't an old wive's tale, everyone we spoke to confirmed there wasn't enough supply," Mr Storey said.

"We actually met with one of the major growers in the State and asked, 'what do you need to scale up the marron industry?'

"And he said, 'it doesn't scale up, this industry is not gonna scale up'."

For many, that kind of response would have put a stop to any plans, but for Mr Walker and Mr Storey, it was the perfect opportunity to find a solution.

They asked themselves: "if you can't scale the pond aquaculture that they're doing today, what would it look like if you could?"

"We looked at the size of the western rock lobster industry, and considered what technologies you would need to grow that many marron," Mr Walker said.

With a few obstacles in their way, like the slow growth rate of marron, they threw around a few ideas, first considering what it might look like to grow 10,000t of marron a year.

From looking at Olympic-sized swimming pools with nets and crazy pipe networks, nothing was off the table.

Eventually they found a potential solution in vertical farming, a technique mainly being used for hydroponic lettuce farms.

With a background in robotics, the pair could see the potential, not only in a higher volume per square metre, but also an opportunity for automation.

In their prototype farm based in Shenton Park, the marron are stacked 10 high, but with automation, they would be stacked higher.

"The land intensity of marron farming is 200 grams of output per year per square metre of pond," Mr Storey said.

"At those densities, to hit 10,000t, you need quite a large pond, however going up allows for much better utilisation of the land."

Over the past four years they have focused on the practicalities of growing marron, working out firstly if marron will even grow in a tank by themselves.

At the end of this biological phase they have uncovered some great reasons why marron are well-suited to this farming technique.

"Marron are aggressive towards each other which limits density in traditional ponds," Mr Storey said.

"The marron grow best when they are happy, so we optimise their growing conditions, they are in little 'condos', we like to say.

"In our experiments, we played with a variety of toys to encourage growth and activity."

This first phase of the project was the most challenging for Mr Storey and Mr Walker, who have no background in agriculture, aquaculture or farming.

The second phase, which they are entering now, is to work on the engineering for robotic automation.

While this is the pair's area of expertise and where they are both the most confident, it was important to test the underlying biological practicality of their proposed approach first.

"There's a fundamental difference between designing a system for automation from the ground-up versus applying automation to existing systems that were designed for people," Mr Storey said.

"For us to go and help farmers grow more marron with robots is just not practical, versus going from the beginning, asking what system would be automatable and then checking to see if a marron would grow in that system."

With agriculture lagging behind other industries when it comes to automation, this kind of vertical protein farming could be a way of the future.

"When we first started to speak to farmers, there was certainly a degree of scepticism, which is why it was so important to run some fundamental tests and see if this is viable" Mr Storey said.

READ MORE:

So what's next for the sustainable protein company, now that they know vertical marron farming, or 'condos' work?

"Now, it's just a matter of cost," Mr Storey said.

"We have one lab technician at the moment but we need to expand our volume through automation."

Currently the marron 'condos' are limited in number until the automation is developed.

As part of the next phase of the project, Aquatic AI is seeking to raise $2 million, with the funding to be used to finalise the engineering of the automated vertical system.

"We've done the biological proof of concept and now we're doing the engineering prototype," Mr Walker said.

"At the end of that we will have the whole thing proven, end-to-end and it's just a matter of duplicating that system for more scale.

"Ideally, if you came back in two years, it will be a fully automated system, with robots managing the marron."

With a blue sky thinking approach to their business, once this prototype is successful, the pair believe there is huge potential for other vertical protein farms.

"We've been speaking with some abalone farmers and other kinds of higher value products," Mr Walker said.

"There has been a lot of different interest in this kind of sustainable protein."

With increasing investment in plant-based protein and cell cultured protein as well, the pair see this as part of the massive race to produce high quality protein for the world.

WANT TO KNOW MORE?