The challenge
The importance of aquaculture as a source of animal protein has increased dramatically over the past years as fish stocks are continuously decreasing and agricultural systems are failing to keep up with increasing demand for food.
The European Commission’s Blue Growth Agenda identifies aquaculture as one of the most promising sectors in terms of economic growth and job potential. In the South Baltic area, however, aquaculture is not yet an established sector. Particularly innovative and environmentally friendly production technologies are still lacking in the region, technologies which could develop the sector and increase its international competitiveness. InnoAquaTech aims to bridge this gap by contributing to the development and transfer of such innovative and sustainable technologies across the South Baltic area. SMEs all over the region will get access to state-of-the-art technology, know-how, expertise and financing models.
Our approach
InnoAquaTech project partners have the scientific expertise and financial know-how to act as advisors and facilitators of aquaculture technology. Grounding our work on the results on the INTERREG projects AQUAFIMA and SUBMARINER, the aim was to promote recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) as well as innovative combinations of these with, for example, plant production and/or renewable energy production.
In the course of doing so, we endeavoured to:
- Identify best practices of integrated aquaculture systems and evaluate their agro-economic impact;
- Create a network of stakeholders;
- Develop and implement an SME service package consisting of matchmaking events, trainings, study visits and an innovation check tool;
- Implement four pilot projects to gain hands-on experience in innovative aquaculture.
What we aimed to achieve
We aimed to implement four successful pilot projects, to showcase the viability of a strong aquaculture economy in the South Baltic Region. These projects also served as decision support for potential investors and the project itself was thus a truly useful service for SMEs. As a result, SMEs and their support organisations gained increased innovation capacity as well as being more able to develop and implement cross-border value chains. This in turn helped strenghen the South Baltic area’s aquaculture sector and contribute to more sustainable food production.
To facilitate closer cooperation and knowledge exchange between different stakeholders, a transnational and cross-sectoral network South Baltic Aquaculture Alliance was established.
SUBMARINER Network for Blue Growth EEIG
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Germany
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