Feb. 13, 10.30 a.m. CET

Barramundi lessons, from Poland

Poland’s first red tilapia farm, made with a €10 million ($13.23 million) investment, is near completion and will begin operation in May this year, said Jakob Kicerman, board member at Poland-based Global Fish, an aquaculture company that currently farms barramundi in Wymoj, Poland.

“We currently farm 120 metric tons of barramundi using recirculating aquaculture systems, which we then supply fresh to hotels, restaurants and caterers, and also some to retailers,” Kicerman told IntraFish. “The red tilapia farm -- based in Bonki -- will farm 1,200 metric tons once operational.”

Global Fish first began with farming 3 metric tons of barramundi in Olsztyn in Poland in 2002, which was sold entirely in the company’s own restaurant. It chose a non-native fish to provide an alternative to frozen fish products. Now, about 70 percent of its farmed barramundi -- which is GlobalGAP certified -- is sold in the domestic market.

“Our strategy was to popularize barramundi in Poland through partnerships with retailers,” said Kicerman. “It worked, as barramundi is known in our markets now.

“We want to supply products that are as fresh as possible -- in Poland, for example, we can deliver fish on the very same day after harvesting.”

“We see a big future is sustainable farming,” Kicerman said.

But how sustainable is farming a tropical specie in Poland [incidentally, Kicerman told IntraFish that construction work on the tilapia farm had to be temporarily halted as temperatures dropped to -27 degrees centigrade], GlobalGAP or no GlobalGAP?

New technology is the answer, Kicerman said. Using renewable energy, innovative oxygen dissolving systems, heat exchangers et cetera make the difference.

“We have learned our lessons with barramundi, which is also a non-native specie,” Kicerman told IntraFish.

“We had many problems with production costs, quality control with our barramundi ventures -- we now know what not to do.”

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