Tilapia is big business in global terms. According to Food and Agriculture Organization data, total world production in 2009 amounted to more than 3.1 million metric tons, up from 2 million metric tons in 2005.
Tilapia is now America’s fourth most popular seafood item, but it is just beginning to gain recognition in the European Union. In 2010, the EU imported just 287,000 metric tons of the species. Tilapia has a 7 percent share of the EU’s freshwater finfish market, while pangasius has a 73 percent share; even Nile perch has a higher share than tilapia at 11 percent.
The majority of tilapia imports are frozen, but air-freighted fresh tilapia fillets are finding a growing niche market in high-end restaurants in France and the United Kingdom. This fish is also gaining popularity in UK retail outlets.
Such interest has attracted the attention of UK farmers keen to grow fish on home soil, although farming of tilapia has been restricted until recently to research projects, with output ranging from just 13 metric tons in 2006 to 16 metric tons in 2009.
The picture is about to change, however, with the establishment of two large commercial units — the only two in the UK — on agricultural estates in the east of England, each of which have the potential to produce more than 160 metric tons per year. Now in their third year of operation, they are proving that red tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) can be a successful and valuable addition to an arable or stock farm, with wastes from the fish tanks used for irrigation and fertilizer.
The 5,000-acre Lockwood Estate near Lincoln houses tilapia in a former pig shed fitted with state-of-the-art recirculation technology. Fingerlings are bought in from the Netherlands at 0.2 grams apiece and delivered in batches of 30,000 fish each month. These are grown out in a series of tanks for around eight months until they reach market size of 500 grams. Stocking density is currently around 45 kilograms per cubic meter, which leaves potential to increase. Technical and health issues are being overcome, and the farm is confident of success.
Lockwood farm is currently working at around 50 percent of capacity and building numbers steadily in response to market demand. “When the farm was set up, we had no clear idea of how or where to market the fish but thought that selling them would not be a problem,” said unit manager Richard Clarke. “The reality was that we were fighting two other small units in the area for the same customers, who did not value the fish above cheap frozen imports, and our tilapia were piling up unsold.”
This issue needed to be resolved swiftly, and the farms needed to be more market-driven. The answer was for the two main operations to collaborate to form a trading arm, called The Fish Co., and employ sales and production director Dr. Adrian Hartley, a tilapia farming expert. Within months of arrival at the start of 2011, he had signed supply contracts with two major UK retailers, two of the country’s largest fish markets and a large wholesale foodservice distributor. Export markets opened up, notably in Spain and Poland, and the potential for value-added products and live fish sales are being explored.
“We have now gone from an over-supply of fish to a position where we need to expand production in order to meet demand for our tilapia,” explained Hartley. “We are setting up nursery units which will enable us to increase the number of fish production cycles from 1.5 to 2.5 per year and are planning to build a local hatchery and processing plant. We are also actively seeking other farming estates in the area willing to take on a new diversification project.
“The key to market access was to make our fish desirable to consumers who have a preference for local products,” he continued. “To this end our marketing campaigns explain that The Fish Co. tilapia is a high quality, sustainable, fresh British product, which is superior to and different from a frozen import.”
With retail and wholesale interest growing steadily, the pressure is now on to produce more fish and bring tilapia into the mainstream. Only time will tell if this becomes a reality.
