Economic & Management Issues of Recirculating Aquaculture Ventures Dr. Michael B. Timmons Professor Department of Biological & Environmental Engineering Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14850 USA

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Economic Management Issues of Recirculating
Aquaculture VenturesDr. Michael B.
TimmonsProfessorDepartment of Biological
Environmental EngineeringCornell
UniversityIthaca, NY 14850 USA
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Fingerlakes Aquaculture LLC

• Fully integrated tilapia farm, breeding,
  fingerling, growout
• 1999 production 150,000 lb/yr (Phase I)
• Sold 500,000 lb during 2000 (Phase II, new
  facility)
• Designed for 1.2 million lb/yr
• Positive cash flow by January 2002

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STRATEGY

• Become the low cost producer of farm or tank
  raised white fish for the US mass market
  consumers of fresh fish. Use this competitive
  advantage to sustain a marketing program to brand
  Tilapia as a substitute fresh white fish.

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Strategy (continued)

• Apply proven techniques of fresh poultry
  production and marketing to the fish farming
  industry to establish substitute protein source
  to current declining salt water species
• Establish FINGERLAKES FRESH as an ultimate brand

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Lessons Learned

• Dont do it!
• Stop before its too late
• If you start, do NOT run out of money (Ill
  mention this again)

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Lessons Learned (continued)

• 2, 2, 2, 2 rule
• twice as long
• twice as much
• twice as hard
• 1/2 as much (revenue)

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Lessons Learned (continued)

• Commodity versus niche
• 200,000 lb/yr (worst position)
• 10,000,000 lb yr (competitive)
• 25,000 lb/yr (niche, family oriented)
• Do NOT NOT NOT run out of money
• speed of ramp up and operating costs prior to
  full production targets

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Keys to Fingerlakess Expansion Success

• larger scale of operations
• unit input prices lower overhead per unit goes
  down
• trained workforce
• improved technology
• adequate water
• greatly reduced electrical costs
• targeted marketing approach

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Mistakes

• Slight changes in prototype (from Cornell
  system)
• Lack of adequate water supply
• Under-estimating water requirements
• Purging requirements
• Cleanup requirements
• Flushing during tank emergencies
• General usage around farm
• Deterioration in well supply (50 at least)

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False Assumptions

• Applying successful prototype systems to
  alternate species
• feces differences
• water quality tolerances
• differences in performance and behavior of water
  conditioning equipment, e.g. fine solids capture
  in coarse or fine sand fluidized beds

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Most Important ResourceManagement Team

• You can overcome just about any challenge if you
  have a good management team
• Prior experience a necessity
• can build in house via a series of expansions
• dangers of going too big too fast

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Financing Sources of Capital

• Look in the mirror...
• Look in the mirror again!
• Banks View (Bank guaranteed loans are a myth)
• you will fail and therefore they require a
  perfected secured loan
• salvage values of 10 cents on the Dollar at best

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Financing (continued)

• Venture capital for aquaculture startups does NOT
  exist
• Venture capital for expansion efforts can be
  obtained
• Requires close personal contacts and documented
  previous success

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Financing (continued)

• Takes a tremendous amount of time to obtain
• Takes an immense amount of patience and ingenuity
• Even successful securements, take several months
  to obtain actual in hand

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Investment Choices

• Only invest in operations with proven success
• includes investing your own money
• Probability of success of a startup venture very
  small

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Species Choice

• myth of high value species (lets do walleye?)
• successful aquaculture results in dramatic drops
  in wholesale price
• salmon, striped bass, tilapia

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Reminders

• Catfish farm side _at_ 0.75/lb and 45 fillet yield
  gt tilapia farm gate at 0.55/lb
• establishes commodity price for other species

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Reminders Broiler production

• 1,000,000 kg/yr per person
• 0.10/kg for labor, capital costs, utilities
  (most)
• twice feed requirements per unit meat produced
• productivity per unit space only 50 of indoor
  fish production

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Some other gentle reminders
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Marketing Efforts What FLA did

• Wegmans fillets and whole fish
• Test marketing with local Wegmans
• Live Fish Market wholesaler (Philadelphia)
• Chinese Market in Rochester
• Restaurants (local)
• Stew Leonards (Norwalk and Danbury CT)
• Whole Foods Inc (Bread Circus)
• Sysco Foods

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Cost Analysis Impact of Scale
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Fillet Cost in Store
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It looks so good, its scary!
Any Questions or Comments ?