Superior Fresh Poised To Sell First US land-Raised Atlantic Salmon

Superior Fresh Poised To Sell First US land-Raised Atlantic Salmon

By Matt Craze May 31, 2018

Wisconsin-based aquaponics firm will provide America's first-ever commercial harvest of Atlantic salmon from a land-based facility

While the attention of the US seafood industry is focused on the massive recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) projects planned in the USA by Atlantic Sapphire and Nordic Aquafarms, Wisconsin-based hydroponics farm Superior Fresh is about to sell the first land-raised Atlantic salmon in the United States.

Superior Fresh is on schedule to harvest its first fish in July, a year after opening an aquaponics facility, President Brandon Gottsacker told Undercurrent News. The state-of-the-art facility located in rural Wisconsin utilizes the nitrate-rich discharge from fish held in RAS tanks to fertilize and water leafy greens in an organic, closed-loop system.

“We plan to have the first land-based American grown salmon in retailers the week of the Fourth of July,” Gottsacker said.

Superior Fresh and others are responding to growing consumer appetite for locally sourced food. US Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said earlier this month that he will seek to make the US into a net exporter of seafood compared with the market currently where it imports more than 80% of seafood needs. The US imports close to 500,000 metric tons a year of Atlantic salmon mainly from Chile and Norway.

The wealthy Wanek family, owners of US furniture outlet Ashley Furniture HomeStore, built the space-aged greenhouse with an investment close to $100 million. Ashley Furniture has annual revenues close to $4 billion a year and the family also owns the Winghouse Bar and Grill, a Florida-based restaurant chain.

Superior Fresh pumps out 2m pounds of leafy greens every year from a 100,000-square-foot glass greenhouse that is 30 times more efficient than a conventional lettuce farm, per square meter. The plant only requires four additional gallons of water a minute, about 20 times than conventional lettuce farming.

Solids from the fish house are broken down from ammonia to nitrates. After treatment, Superior Fresh sends this water from the bluehouse to greenhouse to water the plants via underground piping. The water is cleansed by the leafy greens and is pumped back into the 40,000-square-foot aquaculture system in filtered form.

Superior Fresh was awarded the Monterey Bay’s green-ranking for its fish “right off the bat”, Gottsacker said.

The RAS facility will harvest Atlantic salmon and steelhead on a weekly basis. Atlantic Sapphire’s first harvest from its dedicated grow-out facility currently being built near Miami will occur in 2020.

Both hydroponics facilities and dedicated grow-out plants such as the Atlantic Sapphire facility are complementary, said Steve Summerfelt, director of systems research at the Freshwater Institute, a non-profit organization that specializes in the study of RAS systems.

Superior Fresh’s model will supply about 160,000 pounds (80t) a year of Atlantic salmon, much less than Atlantic Sapphire’s fully operating nameplate capacity of 10,000t a year, Summerfelt told Undercurrent. That said, the proliferation of the Superior Fresh model could boost locally grown fish and vegetable supply across America and create thousands of jobs, he said.

Contact the author matt@sphericresearch.com