Fisheries, aquaculture and aquatic feed production: The state of development

by Amandus Kahl, Germany

Global consumption of fish is steadily increasing. While production was still at 20 million tonnes worldwide in around 1950, by 2016 it had already exceeded 170 million tonnes (FAO: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture - Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, 2018). But the share of capture fisheries has only grown slightly since the 1980s and has been stagnating in recent years, due to overfishing and shrinking fish stocks.

Since the 1990s, aquaculture has been the focus of attention. It is a global growth market, with 61.8 million tonnes produced in 2011 and 80 million tonnes of fish already in 2016 with a market value of 231.6 billion dollars. It corresponds to almost half (47%) of edible fish produced worldwide. The aquaculture industry, with its high growth rates, is one of the fastest growing branches in the global food industry. This growth trend is expected to continue in the upcoming years (FAO: The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture - Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, 2018).
 

In order to make aquaculture more sustainable and cost efficient, the replacement of animal proteins by vegetal proteins and the use of highly nutritious microalgal species is being discussed more and more. An optimised feed strategy for maximum raw material utilisation requires a versatile and appropriate micro-proportioning of enzymes, vitamins and essential amino acids. We at Kahl would like to combine the ecological and economical components in one intelligent plant concept.

The Kahl concept for aquatic feed plants
The standardised aquatic feed plant concept in a modular design from Kahl is perfectly adapted to the needs of producers. The individual machines of the production line are equipped with the most modern process technology, which enables conveying, proportioning, preconditioning, conditioning, extrusion, vacuum coating (infusing) and subsequent cooling and storage. The following figure shows the gold standard of aquatic feed production by Kahl.

The raw materials are stored in silos with load cells and can be conveyed as required. The proportioning system controls the mass flow throughput of the entire system and enables a consistent proportioning. The versatile Kahl screw conveyors with variable speed allow gravimetric or volumetric proportioning of the raw materials. Due to the continuous weight measurement, this system offers highest accuracy.

Read more, HERE.

The Aquaculturists

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