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Blazing a new trail in the Baltics

While recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) facilities are still a rarity in the Baltic region, the exceptional journey of SIA Akva Agro, a sturgeon farm in Salaspils, not far from Riga, stands as a beacon of potential in this corner of Europe. 

The history behind SIA Akva Agro is rather unique, recalls Vasiliy Krasnoborodko, a SIA Akva Agro minor shareholder. Having built several RAS farms in other countries, Krasnoborodko embarked on the ambitious journey of launching his own project. His quest led him to the main financial street of Old Riga, where he sought investments and equity participation for his future fish farm, instead of a traditional loan.

Despite repeated rejections, Krasnoborodko’s unwavering determination eventually led to a fortuitous encounter in a bank, where he met a well-known Latvian entrepreneur who shared his vision. 

“That’s how a man from the street came to the bank and left with a partner and an investor,” Krasnoborodko said.

The partners found a site near Salaspils and secured support from European funds to construct a sturgeon farm for growing sturgeon for black caviar.

“I designed everything myself,” Krasnoborodko claimed. “I also supervised the construction and participated in the equipment installation.” 

A thorny path

Strictly speaking, however, Krasnoborodko was far from being a man from the street. By then, he had likely already acquired more experience in RAS technology than anyone else in Latvia could boast of. He was engaged in over 20 RAS projects in different countries, some of which were state-of-the-art facilities. 

Krasnoborodko’s portfolio involves projects on opposite sides of the globe, implemented in extreme weather conditions, such as hot tropics or harsh frosts of the Polar Circle. 

“I built a RAS farm in Thailand to grow sturgeons, where it is always summer and hot for sturgeons. Sturgeons do not like temperatures above +25 C, and it is usually hotter in Thailand,” Krasnoborodko unveiled.

Even more peculiar was a project in the Yamal Peninsula — the Russian part of the Arctic caught in permafrost. Keeping the farm running in such conditions is associated with some outstanding challenges. 

“In Salekhard (a Russian city in the Arctic), everything underground is frozen and turned into ice 100 metres down. It is impossible to drill a well or a borehole. The water in the well would freeze immediately,” Krasnoborodko stated. 

All the water in that farm was brought from the outside. The owner even had to buy a 20 m³ water truck to ensure uninterrupted water supply to his farm. 

Krasnoborodko noted that the high cost of delivering water was compensated with relatively low electricity and heating costs, as the Yamal Peninsula is rich in natural gas. The strong local population’s purchasing power also helped the farm generate profit, as the monthly salary in this part of Russia is close to €2,000 (US$2,204) — almost twice the country’s average. 

Climate plays a role even in RAS operation. In Thailand, despite the challenges of the tropics, there have been unexpected benefits to operating in a warm climate. Fish mature more rapidly in warm weather than in their native chilly north. In Russian Siberia, the growth is much slower. 

Originally graduated from the Moscow Physics and Mathematics Institute as a specialist in the physics of sea and oceanology, Krasnoborodko studied fish farming in Israel and RAS technologies in the U.S.

The Soviet-era marine technology school was really strong, offering some of the best education available in the world around that time.  

“When humanity was crazy about space in the 1970s, there were enthusiasts who turned their gaze not to the clouds, but down, to the depths of the sea,” Krasnoborodko recalled.

“I have loved fish since childhood. I have always had aquariums at home, and now at home, I have a large aquarium for 1.8 m³ of fresh water,” Krasnoborodko stated. “By the way, an aquarium is also a RAS.”

Over the years, Krasnoborodko experimented with using RAS to grow different seafood species, including shrimp, catfish, eels, crayfish, sturgeons, trout and even sea sharks.

Uninterrupted operation

At the Salaspils site, Krasnoborodko helped build a large fish farm consisting of three buildings with a total area of 3,300 m². 

“We have about 60 metric tons of sturgeon broodstock. We can get two metric tons of caviar per year, which is about 40 kilograms of caviar per week constantly and continuously per year,” Krasnoborodko explained. 

“We mainly get caviar from fish without killing the females. We milk the eggs and release the females to the fattening workshop so they can continue to live, gain weight, and produce new eggs.”

From the beginning, the investors envisaged an opportunity to double production performance by adding the second floor. 

“I specially built a high building, six meters high, for this,” Krasnobodko said.

The farm has been running smoothly for nearly 15 years. In general, Krasnobodko says, “to set up a machine that would work uninterruptedly for 15 years” is quite a challenge. However, it would be wrong to say that the SIA Akva Agro’s operation was entirely cloudless. 

“The main difficulties we encountered were sales and energy costs,” Krasnobodko revealed.” We planned to sell [caviar] to Russia and Belarus since Latvia shares borders with these countries and sturgeon is a traditional food out there.”

Sturgeon, often referred to as the royal fish, has seen a resurgence in popularity, with increasing demand for its meat and black caviar in Europe and Latvia. ‘Our sales are growing every year,’ Krasnoborodko proudly stated.

Since sturgeon is a heat-loving fish, the farm runs two 120 kW gas boilers. Also, to simulate winter and spring—to milk fish eggs—the farm uses water cooling with an 80-kW chiller. In this context, energy efficiency has come to the fore in recent years. 

“We now need investments to install solar panels and make heating with a heat pump, not a gas boiler,” Krasnobodko said.

To overcome the energy crisis, Krasnoborodko believes the Baltic countries need to revive the nuclear energy development program, which was shut down more than a decade ago when plans for the construction of the Ignalina nuclear plant in Lithuania were scrapped.

An era of AI

In a bid to further streamline operations, Krasnoborodko is now looking into opportunities offered by artificial intelligence (AI). In particular, he revealed that he had designed a program for automatic fish counting in a pool.

“I use a neural network for the detection task. This neural network finds a fish and draws a rectangle around it. Then, a small algorithm tracks the detected object,” Krasnoborodko explained.

Even if the neural network has lost the fish, the tracking algorithm remembers it for a minute, and as soon as the lost fish appears in the frame again, it will have the old ID number assigned when it was first detected, Krasnobodko stated. This technology has already proved its value. 

“It is possible online, using another neural network that performs the segmentation task, to count the area occupied by fish and from there calculate their total weight; to determine the size, use the dimensions of the pool, namely the diameter of the pool. And this, in turn, allows you to calculate the feed coefficients,” Krasnoborodko claimed. 

The future holds great promise. Krasnoborodko revealed that he found a new investor from Kazakhstan to build a new trout pond with a capacity of 500 tons per year. Krasnoborodko stated that the project worth €5 million (US$5.5 million) got a €3 million (US$3.3 million) subsidy from European funds.

Despite becoming increasingly busy, Krasnoborodko is not planning to abandon RAS. Aside, from SIA Akva Agro he also works as a project manager in engineering company Akva Ferma. “Through, this firm I keep building RAS worldwide,” he added.   

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