Aquaculture Innovation Award Pitch: Aaron Pannell, FlipFarm GOAL 2021

[Music] i've farmed oysters for most of my working life there's some amazing days to be had on the water and then there's times you want to forget for us 2016 was the year from hell the good news was that demand for our oysters was through the roof unfortunately we tried to scale too quickly and we got badly burned as a result we had 25 million oysters on the farm when we were hit with an oyster virus after the virus came a plague of flatworms by the end of the year we were left with less than half our stock biofouling added to a heavy workload and a three-day storm wrecked havoc on the farm took us two weeks to get back on our feet apart from the challenges mother nature threw at us were also short staffed something had to give or something had to change there's a lot of different ways to grow oysters but it's physical work it's tough and scaling up production comes with a lot of challenges quality and efficiency are the keys to sustainable profit and aquaculture but often they're considered mutually incompatible i'm a big believer that there are no shortcuts to quality but when you're farming millions of oysters sometimes you need shortcuts during that year from hell in 2016 i spent a lot of time thinking about how to reinvent oyster farming i figured there had to be a better way the challenge was how to produce a beautiful high quality oyster using a system that reduced the time and effort involved innovation is about coming up with new solutions to old problems oyster farming's traditionally been a male dominated industry it's dirty and comfortable back-breaking work each growing container has to be handled individually multiple times some workers thrive on this physical challenge but staff turn over and burn out as high pests biofouling and bad weather are some of the constant challenges that oyster farmers have to deal with how can one system overcome all these issues the flip farm oyster growing system isn't just new it's revolutionary instead of handling each basket individually they are connected together in rows enabling much more efficient processes mechanization flow automation not words you typically associate with oyster farming until now that is this is a story of how and why we invented the flip farm oyster growing system it's the story of how we change the culture of our company and the lives of growers around the world debbie and i have been involved in shellfish farming for more than 30 years our farming operation is in the marlborough sounds at the top of the south island of new zealand it's been a wonderful place to bring up a family we've been pleased to be able to do this while growing our oyster company the area we farm is called squaly cove and it's well named one of our biggest issues was the loss of growing equipment off the farms bags washing up onto our beaches is not only a financial loss but was unacceptable to us environmentally i came to the conclusion that we needed to permanently attach the bags to the line this meant that they would have to be filled and emptied on the farm which floating bags are not ideal for so i started looking for a more suitable container and that's when i spotted these hexel baskets in the corner of our yard to ensure they could not come off the lines i threaded the rope right through the basket then a few weeks later while i was out checking the oysters i lifted the line up and all the baskets flipped over and sat on their floats as it turns out this was the eureka moment when i realized the importance of the individual rotation of the baskets from there we continued to develop the system and this really accelerated once we had the buy-in from our farming staff ideas flowed and trials were done as we fine-tuned the components and machinery this matured into the robust and efficient flip farm system it has now been grounded patents in the us new zealand and australia flip farms resilience provided us the much needed peace of mind during our frequent storms so our focus turned to maximizing efficiency by automating the handling processes because the baskets were being handled more like a bottling plant we could treat them as a continuous line rather than a number of individuals this created significant time savings and even more importantly almost eliminated the physical effort required for many of our farming operations filling the baskets is now a smooth and continuous process everything is done at a comfortable height as the baskets are filled they return to the growing position and quickly self-level providing an ideal environment for growth the baskets can be emptied at a rate of one every four seconds even without breaking a sweat because only the oysters are being transported there are significant savings made in vessel operations biofouling control is another one of the highlights of the flip farm system previously one of the most time consuming and physical jobs it's now become a firm favorite with our team the baskets are rotated onto their floats using a helix flipper holding them clear of the water and allowing the baskets and oysters to air dry hair drying is recognised as an extremely efficient way to control biofouling at a rate of around 7000 baskets per hour it's now also one of the easiest and fastest flip farm has cleared a lot of the bottlenecks in our farming operation however the drive for improved efficiency is not limited to flip farm operations the ease of handling has increased our sorting efficiency resulting in a 60 improvement in our daily throughput flip farm has provided the stimulus to change the way we think our staff are now motivated to pursue efficiency gains throughout the entire operation the ease of operation of flip farm has provided an additional unexpected benefit it has allowed us to employ a much wider staff demographic in the past we used to have to hire quite a large number of crew depending on the season and we would usually have to hire our staff based on their physicality with flip farm now we're looking for a smaller number of staff and due to the nature of the work we can hire people with a range of different skills so now we can hire people from a larger age range it makes the whole hiring process a lot easier i never really considered being an oyster farmer i guess because i thought it was going to be back breaking man's work when my uncle showed me flip farm i realized that i'd be able to help out on the boat just because it made it so easy and i could do it with my baby on my back literally pests and diseases took a real toll on our profitability flatworm is a predatory invertebrate over the years we lost many millions of oysters to this pest once we were able to reliably dry the baskets we found that flatworm as well as the equally problematic mud worm were virtually eliminated from our oysters staggering 200 reduction in our mortality rates from just these two pests alone has resulted in an increase in profitability equal to the cost of replacing our previous system with flip farm in just two years with advantages at so many levels the return on investment from the flip farm system is significant this is allowing flip farm to gain a growing reputation around the world the reason you'd use this system in particular to grow oysters is because it makes the business model a sustainable business next year we should be able to sell half a million keith butterfield calls this new flip system revolutionary the first main oyster farmer to install one it's an idea he discovered in new zealand an idea he touts will significantly save on labor this system allows for you to stand upright the baskets are on a swivel you can open the basket up and dump it without lifting anything farming oysters the traditional method means a lot of lifting every day each basket can weigh 100 pounds and one by one need to be pulled up emptied and flipped over but the amount of labor to do that it makes this not a sustainable business for a small family farm a small family operation himself butterfield can now do mechanically in one hour what used to take him an entire day to accomplish by hand the bottom line allowing his company to produce more oysters at a cheaper cost per oyster this system this flip farm system allows for you to increase production to well over a million oysters per worker per year and that gives you the profit needed to run a farming operation butterfield believes this flip system is only helping to make his a more sustainable business model from the 200 000 oysters he'll sell this year he predicts in two years one million plus more profits and not to mention a cleaner casco bay we need to rebuild our commercial fisheries this is one component in that we're improving our waters we all know the flip farm system grows fantastic oysters but the real innovation here are the benefits it provides people and their environment flip farm system is changing the way we grow oysters in new zealand with approximately 50 of our production expected to come from this grout system within a few short years at the end of the day the aim of any oyster farmer is to improve the quality of their oysters it's just so satisfying to see the improvement in our oysters since we developed the flip farm system it's been wonderful to be recognized as the producer of new zealand's top oyster for the past four years running i now look forward to visiting our customers and could not be more proud of the product we are supplying to them the past four years since our year from hell have been truly transformational for our company i'm not sure we'd still be in business at this level without the flip farm system instead we now have the confidence to expand our business into worldwide export it's exciting times and we can't wait to see where it takes us next you

Channel: Global Seafood Alliance

Views: 7,532

Keywords: goalconf21, goal conf 21, goal conference 2021, global outlook for aquaculture leadership, aquaculture innovation award, aquaculture innovation award finalist, aquaculture innovation, aquaculture innovation award 2021, global seafood alliance, Aaron pannell, flipfarm

Id: jT8I2kdsDpc

Length: 11min 8sec (668 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 17 2021