If approval is given, it will open the way to the first large-scale use in England of a technology which is the buzzword in fish farming circles – Recirculating Aquaculture Systems or RAS. Planning officials and councillors at North East Lincolnshire Council are expected to make a decision by the end of the year on whether to approve the application from AquaCultured Seafood Ltd, the London-based consortium of investors behind the project, who include veterans of the Scottish salmon industry as well as a salmon fishing enthusiast. According to the OECD, global fish consumption will reach 180m tonnes per annum by 2030 – a 14 per cent increase on 2020 levels – with farmed fish expected to provide the vast majority of that growth.īut the New Clee facility is also an innovation which its critics, including many in the surrounding community, argue represents an unacceptable industrialisation of salmon farming analogous with “battery farming” which brings with it an uncertain impact both on the landscape and on the welfare of a species evolved to swim thousands of miles in a lifetime. It is a project which its proponents claim will bring jobs and income to one of the UK’s most deprived areas, while also pioneering a new rearing technique with the potential to help solve the intractable issue of humanity’s insatiable demand for fish at a time when 90 per cent of the world’s fisheries have reached or exceed capacity. With a maximum output of 5,000 tons of salmon a year, produced in a succession of 50 large indoor tanks, the facility would supply the UK market and exceed the output of the current largest offshore Scottish farm by about 25 per cent.
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