If you think that prawns belong in a 1970s cocktail, think again. King prawns have moved up-market and demand is insatiable. Currently, the UK consumes around 40,000 tonnes-per-annum and Europe about ten times that. Unfortunately, most have travelled, frozen, 6,000 miles from the Far East and Central America, leaving a massive carbon footprint.
But, in 2015, Dougie Allen and James McEuen set out to change that when they founded Great British Prawns. Both men have a background in the army and attended Cranfield University.
“We saw an opportunity in the expanding prawn market”, says Dougie, “and we wanted to find a better way of farming shellfish. Specifically, we wanted to increase production intelligently and responsibly with a focus on production efficiency gains while ruthlessly focusing on animal welfare.”
A stable economy
Appropriately, for farmer’s son Dougie, their first experiments in prawn breeding were undertaken in a converted stable on a farm in Fife, Scotland. Inspired by their success, they were joined by Technical Director Dr Andrew Whiston, a hands-on marine biologist with twenty-five years’ experience in the design, construction and operation of Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS).
In the summer of 2019, with Andrew acting as Project Manager, the company opened its first sustainable king prawn farm in the Scottish village of Balfron, Stirlingshire. Now it supplies fresh prawns to hotels and restaurants within a two-hour drive of the farm.
"We know that consumers are increasingly concerned about the environmental impact of seafood production and to be sustainable”, said James. “COVID-19 has focused a lot of customers on air freight, or lack of it and they are much more appreciative of the home-grown product, so the future of aquaculture really has to be land-based".
No comments:
Post a Comment