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Cost-efficient techniques to develop household equipments for hydroponic aquaculture (aquaponics)

Country of Origin: Belgium
Reference Number: TRBE20171108001
Publication Date: 8 November 2017

Summary

Two Belgian social entrepreneurs have developed a prototype for an aquaponics equipement to be sold to urban household but want to reduce production costs. Aquaponics or hydroponic aquaculture means cultivating vegetables and plants in symbiosis with aquaculture. The equipment is aimed at promoting local sustainable production of food at household level.  They are looking for other aquaponics entrepreneurs for technical cooperation agreement or commercial agreement with technical assistance.

Description

Aquaponics means cultivating vegetables and plants in symbiosis with the aquaculture of fishes. This practice is more and more widespread in cities, creating a natural eco-system where no harmful petro chemicals, pesticides nor herbicides can be used and where fish waste provides an organic food source for the plants, and the plants naturally filter the water for the fish.



Sticking to the acquaponics' principles and practice, two Belgian entrepreneurs - already active in the domain since 2013- want to make aquaponics accessible to households living in cities and thus experiencing space restrictions in order to produce food locally and in a more sustainable way. 



These entrepreneurs are for the moment constituted as non-profit association but are hosted in an incubator specialised for social enterpreneurship projects. They have launched a crowdfunding campaign and privileged cooperative business models. 



With original complementary background in accounting and biology, they have acquired themselves expertise in aquaponics and in freshwater quality improvement. 

They have already developed a prototype in a fab lab to be sold to households but want to reduce their production costs and thus the market price following customers' surveys. 

For this reason, they are now looking for cost-efficient techniques to develop household equipments for hydroponic aquaculture or aquaponics. The goal of their project is not industrial production but rentable small scale direct selling as part of wider activities to sensibilise the public to the benefits of local sustainable production of food. 



They already have contacts at local level with public authorities to demonstrate a bigger prototype and to develop training and other awareness raising activities in order to educate schools, job-seekers and a wider publics to aquaponics techniques and its benefits. 



Other potential clients include restaurants (with aquariums) and corporate buildings. 



These entrepreneurs have international profiles, visited other European aquaponics farms and followed aquaponics training in Europe and already have some international contacts. 



The purpose of the collaboration sought is to establish mid-to-long term partnership in order to finetune their project via a transfer of know-how and technical solutions coming from other acquaponics players, namely companies. They are looking for other aquaponics entrepreneurs for technical cooperation agreement or commercial agreement with technical assistance.

Expertise sought

They are looking for experiences and techniques from other entrepreneurs for 

- aquaponics techniques especially vertical aquaponics 

- and cost-efficient producing techniques for aquaponics equipments. 



The foreseen aquaponics equipments are small in size from 100Lt to 2.500Lt be used by households on a balcony or in a small garden. 



They also need equipment like: siphons (25mm, 32mm, 40mm) Arduino timer, fish tank size from 1000Lt to 5000Lt, ebb and flow table, vegetable compartement, size (1mtX1mt, 1mtX2mt). Hydroponics systems equipments.

Requested partner

Type of partners sought: SME 



Specific area : entrepreneurs with experience in aquaponics



Role of partners: exchange of experiences and of good practices and technical collaboration for the cost-efficient development of the aquaponics equipments.