From The Fish Site, October 7:
Salmon grown in a supermarket near you
Following a €3.7 million deal, Agtira is poised to produce salmon, cucumbers, tomatoes and herbs in an aquaponics facility beside the Östersund branch of Sweden’s largest supermarket chain, Maxi ICA.
As a joint venture, Agtira will provide the system, Maxi will provide the site and buy all the produce. If the site has reached production capacity after four years Maxi will take it over. Either way Agtira will receive a payment of at least 20 million kroner (€1.97 million) over the first four years. It’s an intriguing and original take on aquaponics, but is based on a classic concept.
“We see the food industry moving back. Local producers are gaining the market in every area. And production is moving closer to the cities,” Agtira’s CEO, Mattias Gemborg explains to The Fish Site.
“The key factor is whether we can make it profitable. We can: by cutting out the middle five steps of the value chain, as Maxi will be selling the produce direct to the consumer. It’s the oldest trick in the book, but it works,” he reflects.
“We decided to home in on the buyer – right now we’ve homed in on big supermarkets as we can support a big supermarket with 10 tonnes of fish and 100 tonnes of vegetables and it’s possible to make it profitable, both for them and for us,” he adds....
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