RASTECH Magazine

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Firm secures funding for first shrimp RAS in France

March 15, 2022  By  Nestor Arellano


A European aquaculture start-up company announced that it has raised US$5.34 million to built the first recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility in France.

Lisaqua, which was founded in 2018, said that it secured €2.6 million worth of capital through a set of new investors. Together with earlier funding amounting to €2.3 million, the company now has the €4.9 million it needs to construct a 2,000-square-metre facility, located near Nantes, in the Upper Brittany region of western France. By this spring, Lisaqua intends for the facility to produce 10 tonnes of shrimp per year.

“This funding will allow us to recruit 10 people and to structure strategic partnerships to prepare our scale-up. We plan to set up a network of farms near the main French cities from 2024 in order to make our ultra-fresh shrimp available to as many people as possible,” said Gabriel Boneu, CEO and co-founder of Lisaqua. Boneu is an entrepreneur from the French business school, HEC Paris. Lisaqua is co-founded by Charlotte Schoelinck, Ph.D. in marine biology, and Caroline Madoc, an engineer from Mines de Paris.

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Among the investors in the project are: Le Gouessant Agricultural Cooperative, Litto Invest, Bpifrance, the Crédit Maritime, CIC Ouest banks, and private investors.

The company has developed a permaquaculture technology that combines shrimp, micro-organisms and marine invertebrates in recirculated indoor aquaculture farms. This innovation allows the farming of shrimp without antibiotics, preserves mangroves, and saves 99 per cent of water compared to conventional shrimp farming. Shrimp effluents are treated and used for breeding marine invertebrates for animal feed.

Each year, 80,000 tonnes of frozen shrimp are imported into France, and 290,000 tonnes into Europe. Lisaqua plans to produce 10,000 tonnes of shrimp per year by 2030 in France and Europe.


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