The chairman of Australian Seafarms Group, the company behind Project Sea Dragon, a huge black tiger shrimp farm in northern Australia, has increased his stake in the company following an assessment of risks facing the project.

Ian Trahar now holds almost 30 percent of the company through his various trading entities, having ploughed further cash into the company -- of which Japanese trading giant Nissui also has a stake -- earlier this month.

Seafarms has had a rocky year, with several key executive shifts, a disease crisis at its current operations and burgeoning financial losses, but Trahar said that following the positive outcome of a recent assessment of key risks facing the project -- which has ambitions of producing 150,000 metric tons of shrimp per year -- he felt "a renewed confidence" in the future of the company.