Fish farming is poised to scale new heights in Barbados.
Fresh from victory in the inaugural Bank On Me television reality show for entrepreneurs, and supported by thousands of dollars in winnings and financial assistance from new investors, owner and operator of aquaculture farm Adams Aqualife, Kristina Adams, is in expansion mode.
The company now located in St Philip will be relocated to a “six times bigger” facility in St Thomas by year-end, and it is intended that in the coming weeks and months the hundreds of red tilapia, which now occupy dinner plates in a number of local hotels and restaurants, will be joined by thousands more.
Adams, who stocked her first tank in September 2011 and harvested her first fish in March last year, also told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY that having had the support of “volunteer staff” including close friends Andrew Barrow and Jennifer Dawn-Hole up to now, she intended to hire some fulltime employees by the end of next month.
Tours to be conducted at the new farm location, local production of special tilapia feed now imported from the United States, and fish exports in the “medium term” are also in her plans.
Adams’ farm has six tanks, one of which is not currently in use, and each now caters to 500 to 1 000 tilapia, the equivalent of a half to one tonne of fish per tank. The facility also grows red claw crayfish on a limited basis.
The businesswoman said the aim was to make all of this bigger and better. In addition to using the six tanks to grow more tilapia, 12 smaller tanks will be added to produce crayfish.
“Since winning the show I am getting the investors, I am basically dismantling one site and moving to a bigger site and with the expansion I also will be putting in more fish so we will be starting with 2 000 [fish per tank] but in a couple of months we are going to put them in at 4 000 fish per tank. So it’s going to be between two to four tonnes [of tilapia] every month and then hopefully by the end of next year it will be up to eight tonnes [of tilapia] a month,” she said.
“Right now I am producing for hotels and restaurants only because that’s all the supply I have. So my supply goes straight to [distributor] Shorelinez Inc. and then they will send it directly to restaurants and hotels fresh; so it’s never been frozen. But as my supply gets up we will be looking to obviously have it in the supermarkets and have it available for the average Bajan who wants to come in and buy the fish wholesale; it will be available soon we hope.
“We are at the new site building so I should be completing that new site by the end of the year and I will hopefully have staff by the end of the year, that’s the next step. I am actually going to be looking for two fulltime employees because I am going to have to train people. Nobody here really has a background in fish farming, so I am going to look for two people who want to grow with the company because I see it as something that is going to get very big quickly,” the young entrepreneur added.
The thinking big philosophy will also include “doing tours at the site because part of our campaign is to keep the public aware and happy of what the farming is like because fish farming has had a bad and a good reputation in other countries and if you don’t farm the fish properly you can be bad not just for humans but for the environment as well”.
“Part of our campaign will be to have farm tours where the general public can come in and tour the site and see how we raise the fish and sample the fish, to really get it known that this is a farm that is helping Barbados and helping to lower our food import bill, while increasing our food security,” she said.
“So I really want Bajans to feel that this is 100 per cent Bajan because we are looking at trying to produce everything locally. Right now we have to import feed so one of our longterm goals will be to work with farmers to try to get a local feed produced on the island so that we won’t have to rely on bringing in food for the fish.
“It’s a certified feed that we bring in right now, which is actually made for tilapia in the United States. To get certified for export you have to feed a quality feed, so we have to feed something like that to get export ready.”
Adams said exporting the fish was a medium term goal since “once we have the money, which I think we do at this stage, you just start basically putting in the fish so I would think in a few years we would be looking at exports”.
The “next step” also included producing and selling the crayfish commercially. Adams won the Bank On Me contest, which was produced by Blue Waters Productions and presented in association with Scotiabank, from a field of 30 contestants.
