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May 31, 2019

Dutch company eyes two sites in Maine for land-based yellowtail aquafarm

Kingfish Zeeland Photo / Kingfish Zeeland website A view of Kingfish Zeeland's land-based recirculation facility in The Netherlands, where the company raises Dutch Yellowtail fish for commercial sales that are mostly in Europe. SeafoodSource, a trade publication, reported in early May that the company is looking at two sites in Maine as potential locations for a much-larger facility that would enable it to scale up and meet demand in the U.S. market for yellowtail, a fish used by chefs for grilling, cooking, sushi and sashimi.
By James McCarthy

Kingfish Zeeland, a four-year-old aquaculture company that raises Dutch Yellowtail fish in The Netherlands, is looking at two sites in Maine for its planned expansion into the United States.

The trade publication SeafoodSource, in a May 8 article written by its executive editor Cliff White, reported that Kingfish Zeeland had considered 22 sites along the U.S. East Coast as possible locations for constructing a land-based recirculating aquaculture system that would be larger than its Dutch facility producing 600 metric tons of yellowtail a year for mostly European markets. Kingfish Zeeland CEO Ohad Maiman told SeafoodSource that the company had narrowed its list to two possible sites in Maine, which he declined to identify further.

“We are hopefully 60 to 90 days away from making our final site selection,” Maiman said.

If the Dutch company proceeds with those plans it would join two other major land-based aquaculture projects under development in Maine:

  • Nordic Aquafarms, headquartered in Norway and one of the largest international developers of land-based aquaculture, which announced in January 2018 it plans to build one of the world’s largest land-based salmon farms in Belfast, in a phased multi-year project with a capital investment expected to be between $450 million and $500 million and projected total output of up to 33,000 tons per year. The company is in the process of seeking a submerged lands lease from the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry’s Bureau of Parks and Lands, to install one 36-inch-diameter water discharge pipe and two 20-inch-diameter water intake pipes within a 40-foot-wide corridor on submerged land for commercial use. Construction on Phase 1 — an estimated $150 million investment involving a facility with a capacity of some 16,000 tons and the creation of 60 jobs — is expected to start this year, with operations expected to begin in 2020. 
     
  • Whole Oceans, a Portland-based company that announced in February 2018 its plans to purchase most of the former Verso paper mill site in Bucksport and build a land-based aquafarm there to raise Atlantic salmon in a phased multi-year project. In a May 21 news release, the company reported that it had completed a purchase-and-sale agreement to buy that parcel and said it expects to break ground on its $75 million Phase 1 facility that would initially produce 5,000 metric tons of Atlantic salmon annually and eventually grow to 10,000 metric tons of salmon production. Over time, the company plans to increase capacity to 20,000 metric tons per year on the Bucksport site. 

Kingfish Zeeland sees strong demand

Located in the Province of Zeeland in the Netherlands, Kingfish Zeeland taps into the pristine marine estuary water of the Oosterschelde to deliver what it describes on its website as a “healthy premium delicacy: the Dutch Yellowtai,” which is “a high-grade sashimi, grilled, or smoked classic, and an excellent sustainable alternative recommended as a ‘Green Choice’ by the Good Fish Foundation.”

Photo / Kingfish Zeeland website
Kingfish Zeeland describes the Dutch Yellowtail fish it raises in The Netherlands as a premium fish for “a high-grade sashimi, grilled, or smoked classic, and an excellent sustainable alternative recommended as a ‘Green Choice’ by the Good Fish Foundation.”

Another seafood trade publication, Undercurrentnews.com, reported that Kingfish Zeeland is currently selling into the U.S. market through the Florida Keys-based partner Candor Seafood, with Maiman saying the company has “had fantastic feedback on our product so far.”  He told the publication that the company is marketing its farm-raised yellowtail to chefs as a “premium seafood product” that’s suitable not only for grilling and cooking but also in sushi and sashimi form.

On its website, Kingfish Zeeland said its Dutch facility runs on 100% renewable energy, sourced from wind, solar and biogas. It said its outflow water is rich in nutrients before it is biologically purified in our internal water treatment systems, in order to keep discharge as low as possible” — adding that it tries to “maximize the use of our outflow as fertilizer for salicornia crops and algae production.”
 
It said it worked closely with “some of the world’s leading equipment suppliers and engineering companies” to design and build its Zeeland land-based recirculation system so that it has optimum conditions for raising Dutch Yellowtail fish.

Prior to founding Kingfish Zeeland in 2015, Maiman was vice president of business development at the Merhav Group and had the opportunity “to evaluate, develop, and manage multiple operations in the oil and gas, petrochemical, water treatment and agricultural industries."

He told SeafoodSource that the company’s interest in locating an aquafarm in Maine is driven by its desire to scale up in order to supply the U.S. market from a local facility in the United States instead of being shipped by air freight from The Netherlands.

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