Oceanloop shrimp farming company has received €35 million (about $USD38 million) in debt financing from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The Germany-based company produces shrimp in an antibiotic-free and sustainable saltwater Recirculating Aquaculture System (RAS) that it said has a much smaller environmental footprint than conventional farms.
The market for shrimp is expanding rapidly around the globe, but shrimp are especially prone to some of the dangers of fish farming, including disease, pollution, and excessive use of water. Funding from the EIB will go to research and development around animal welfare and the use of artificial intelligence; construction and operation of a sustainable recirculating aquaculture system (RAS); and processing shrimp production unit in the Canary Islands (Spain).
Some of the R&D will be dedicated to shrimp genetics, feed, animal welfare, computer vision technology (for detecting biomass and stress levels), research on sludge carbonization, organic fertilizer, and medical-grade chitosan–a sugar derived from the outer skeleton of shellfish, including shrimp, that is used as medicine and in drug manufacturing.
Oceanloop, founded in 2023, operates land-based shrimp farms in Munich and Kiel. The company aims to build and operate a first-of-a-kind, large-scale, in-land shrimp production farm that will produce 2,000 tons a year, addressing increased demand for sustainable production of shrimp in Europe, and to expand its existing RDI farm in Kiel to 60 tons per year.
