AquaCon is made-up of highly qualified professionals who have extensive experience in a broad range of fields. This cumulative experience covers fields from teaching to engineering and spans decades. The team is highly passionate about everything they do and have a deep interest and extensive history with aquaculture systems.
Located in the Mary Valley, Queensland the farm was established in 1999 and underwent extensive refurbishment and expansion from 2018-2021, designed and carried outdeveloped by members of the AquaCon team. Operating at the highest standard in the industry, the facility has become one of the biggest and most successful freshwater crayfish operation in Australia.
The farm is a nursery and grow-out facility of redclaw crayfish located on the outskirts of Gympie, Queensland. The farm changed hands in 2018 and key staff of what would later become AquaCon were bought on to perform a comprehensive farm audit.
The audit showed that the site had been significantly under-performing. Historically low production, run-down facilities and equipment and sub-optimal planning had caused a further decline in production impacted by a change of ownership and management.
AquaCon team members established a major personnel restructure, facility rebuild and upgrade. The planned facility expansion was designed to result in a 4-fold yield increase with an anticipated production of 60T/annum.
Through upgrading the technology and employing highly skilled, qualified and passionate personnel, the site was able to facilitate the pilot breeding/hatchery program which was later replicated and then permanently moved to another site under the banner of Austech Aquaculture.
The breeding program utilised brood-stock from multiple wild caught genetic strains and some farmed strains. The main objectives of the program were to maximise growth rates, yield, and disease resistance, ensuring higher return on investment.
The facility rebuilds enabled AquaCon team members to establish and prove a scalable, sustainable aquaculture model. This model has since been revised a number of times into what the team believes is the optimal production model. The AquaCon model is focused on providing a sustainable high-yield stock, while having ultra-low environmental impact. This is achieved by remediation and recirculation of water, electricity generation and high yield animal genetics.
The facility has also been the site of collaboration between the team’s aquatic scientists, universities and Government departments at all levels. These collaborations have validated the technology and processes, provided investors with confidence in future growth.
Beginning in 2019, and following on from the refurbishment of the original facility, the sitelocated just south of Townsville, Queensland was designed to be the largest redclaw crayfish operation in Australia. Following the purchase of an existing and run-down facility, a small refurbishment was performed so the site could act as a supplemental facility to the original farm, while designs and approvals were finalised. With the refurbishments, the facility was able to successfully operate on a smaller scale growing craylings to mature broodstock.
The facility was designed, constructed, managed, and operated by team members of AquaCon with the completed farm being designed to have a production area of 20 hectares and produce a minimum of 200T of redclaw crayfish annually, with an estimated market value of approximately AUD$7M.
Austech Aquaculture coming online was a significant step forward for members of the AquaCon team. Not only did it ensure stability of future earning potential for investors, but it also provides valuable knowledge and technology for exponential growth and a world-class facility to perform commercially backed Research and Development.
The systems were designed and tested in a pilot program at an associated Aquaculture facility located north of Gympie, Queensland. Austech Aquaculture is the culmination of years of research and development, and collaboration between specialists in AquaCon’s team and Australian Universities.
One of the challenges to any primary production business is the ability to secure a high-quality and constant supply of young seedstock. Being able to control this process brings significant advantages in the areas of quality control, supply consistency and genetic variation. The broodstock is made up of multiple, distinct genetic strains, each with their own specific characteristics such as size, growth rate, temperature preference and tolerance to disease.
The Austech Aquaculture facility was designed to have the capacity to hold 12,000 broodstock however, utilising a small percentage of these broodstock, the facility produced approximately 600,000 post-larval redclaw every month. This is sufficient production capacity to service up to 300 hectares of grow-out ponds, and potentially produce up to 1000T of redclaw with a market value of approximately AUD$35M annually.
Securing this supply reduces the risk to investors significantly, and with the knowledge and technology developed by this project, provides AquaCon the ability to scale and build such facilities almost anywhere on the globe.
The AquaCon team have also been involved in intensive finfish aquaculture having led both design and operation of marine finfish systems. This recirculating aquaculture system was based in an industrial area in Noosa, Queensland and produced a range of species.
A recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) reuses the majority of the water by treating it with specialised biological filtration systems and controlling a broad range of inputs and water parameters. This control and intensification required much higher electrical and life-support inputs but generated a much greater volume of fish with a higher feed efficiency (food conversion ratio of 0.7-1.2) than more traditional, extensive systems. This came with associated risks, which were mitigated by the advanced monitoring and redundancy systems but meant that production could be much greater per unit of floor space than other methods of aquaculture with densities of 100-150kg/m3 easily achievable and sustainable. The recirculating nature of the system also decreased the waste outputs and input water requirements, meaning less environmental degradation through discharges and more widely suited to areas that may have limited water supply and high population densities
With an initial production volume of approximately 30T per annum, the system was expanded in 2017 to increase yearly outputs to approximately 70T of high-value marine finfish, producing revenue of AUD$3.5M from a floor area of just 300m2. Queensland giant grouper and barramundi were the main species produced by the system, but the system was designed to cater for a range of marine finfish.
Following the expansion of the grow-out facility, a hatchery was built at a nearby location. This hatchery was able to complete several spawning runs of finfish from broodstock held on-site. The hatchery also had its own algae and live-feed sections to provide the fish larvae with the range of food they require through their developmental stages.
