Wittaya Aqua’s aquaculture platform has landed a USD 2.8 million seed round to support seafood farmers, feed mills and ingredient suppliers as the industry responds to the United Nations' 2030 call to boost global sustainable aquaculture production by 35%.
“In the face of climate change, uncertain market dynamics, and evolving supply chains, ensuring the sustainable provision of seafood requires every stakeholder to adapt. But there is still a critical need to harness and transform the deep knowledge they each own into actionable strategies—and Wittaya Aqua is built to respond to this. We’re here to stand in this gap to lead the development of aquaculture's evolving digital ecosystem. Ensuring it’s an accurate and equitable playing field, where farmers, feed mills and ingredient suppliers can all grow together,” said Evan Hall, CEO and co-founder of Wittaya Aqua.
Wittaya Aqua is an aquaculture platform that consolidates existing data points across the seafood supply chain to drive greater profitability, sustainability and efficiency. In 2023, seafood amounting to over 1.64 billion meals was directly enabled by Wittaya’s aquaculture platform and it is on track to enable 3.3 billion meals in 2024. Farms using the platform have saved up to 20% on their cost of feeding.
The strategic raise will enable Wittaya Aqua to further develop its feed-to-farm platform and expand its reach into Asia Pacific, the largest aquaculture-producing region globally. Currently, the company is working with major aquafeed and integrated farming clients in more than 10 countries.
Wittaya Aqua integrates different streams of information by farmers, feed mills and ingredient suppliers and consolidates it into one platform. With industry-wide and company-specific touchpoints, Wittaya Aqua is able to build accurate science-backed models to help stakeholders improve specific variables or functions. For instance, a farmer now knows exactly how their feed is affecting their animal’s growth rate and can compare their outcomes to industry benchmarks. Or, a feed mill can benchmark the performance of their feeds on different farms to understand how to improve their formulations for specific customers.
Wittaya Aqua's platform also empowers aquaculture stakeholders to meet rising consumer, retail and regulatory expectations for a more transparent and improved value chain. This aligns with the broader industry movement to align practices with the rigorous standards set out by certification bodies like Best Aquaculture Practices and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council.
Today, over half of the aquaculture industry’s top 10 leading companies across Asia, the Americas and Europe have used Wittaya Aqua’s platform to improve outcomes for aquafeed, ingredient supply and farms. Notable customer names include De Heus, Uni-President, US Soybean Export Council, Soy Aquaculture Alliance, Temasek Lifesciences Laboratory, AquaChile, dsm-firmenich, Corbion, Aker BioMarine, AGT Foods, POET, Botaneco and others.
Data collection has traditionally been slow, manual and tedious in aquaculture. Across the feed-to-farm supply chain, each stakeholder already collects their own data on details such as growth, feed intakes, efficiency of feed utilization, survival, water temperature and other water quality parameters and stores it in notebooks or Excel spreadsheets. Since everyone has their own unique set of data points formatted in different ways, there’s no clear way to benchmark industry standards.
Big Data is often positioned as a solution for the industry but there’s a large information gap and huge complexity and diversity (species, culture conditions, types of feeds used, etc.) across aquaculture practices. The challenge lies in integrating comprehensive insights from the entire aquaculture value chain into analytical models. Without a holistic view that includes diverse data points, deriving clear and actionable conclusions remains a formidable task.
Larry Taylor, co-founder of Yield Lab Asia Pacific said that “only with Wittaya Aqua do all practitioners have access to ground-truthed insights that are calculated from the full range of data, from deep nutritional biology of each species through to commercial data of each market, on a global basis. By aggregating and analyzing data across the value chain, their platform equips decision-makers at feed mills, farms, and ingredient suppliers with critical actionable insights tailored to their unique market challenges. Their transformation of aquaculture into a more efficient, sustainable, and data-driven industry is unmatched. With this technology in industry hand, the global seafood production is propelled into its future."
Marianne Nergård, product director for Aker BioMarine said that “Wittaya AquaOp Feed has enabled us to gain a deeper understanding and validation of the value QRILL™ Aqua have in the feed formulations in different parts of the world. With the software, we are able to better estimate both the nutritional and the economical value of adding our raw materials into the diets, which is highly valuable in preparing product strategies and in our conversations with partners and customers.”
