Coralis fish farming platform is aimed at producing up to 8,000 tons of fish with near-wild quality characteristics per year.
Image: Mariculture Systems Portugal LinkedIn page.
The good news continues for Mariculture Systems Portugal (MSP). Yesterday, the offshore aquaculture company announced the receipt of the Aquaculture Activity Title (TAA), which concludes its licensing process.
"A major milestone achieved for offshore aquaculture and the future of sustainable blue food," said Yaron Bar-Tal, CEO of Mariculture System, commenting on the news on his LinkedIn profile. "We're entering the final stages of financial closing for the project, with some room remaining for equity investors," he took the opportunity to remind.
As the Government of Portugal explains on its website, this license entitles its holder to make use of water resources and the territorial sea with the purpose of installing and exploring crops in marine waters, inland waters and related fields.
Thus, with the receipt of the TAA, and together with the DIA (Environmental Impact Statement) and TUA (Single Environmental Title) titles from the Portuguese Environment Agency, MSP is ready to move on to the next phase, the construction of Coralis, its proprietary fish farming platform, designed to produce up to 8,000 tonnes of fish per year, with an emphasis on sustainability and minimizing environmental impact.
Motivated by the rising global demand for seafood, Mariculture Systems' ambitious project to bring sustainable aquaculture to large-scale marine environments begins in Portugal, whose coastal waters will serve as a testing ground for the large-scale offshore platform.
As MSP's leaders—CEO Yaron Bar-Tal, Country Manager in Portugal Peter Beringer, and CSO Fausto Brito e Abreu— explained in an exclusive interview with WeAreAquaculture, Portugal's coast offers the perfect conditions to test the capabilities of the Coralis platform.
"The western coast is especially promising, with its more challenging conditions, where we expect to truly test the limits of our platform," Bar-Tal then explained.
The system is designed to withstand waves up to 17 metres high, making Portugal's Atlantic coast ideal for demonstrating the robustness of the solution, with the cages submerged to calmer, deeper waters during rough seas.
"Coralis demonstrates a pathway to deliver consistent volumes of premium fish, farmed in high-energy open-ocean environments that support strong fish welfare and near-wild quality characteristics," Mariculture Systems said now when announcing the end of the licensing process.
Specifically, it will take place in a location 12 kilometers off the southern coast of Portugal, near the traditional fishing town of Vila Real de Santo António, in the Algarve region, next to the border with Spain.
Planned location of Mariculture Systems' first platform, 12 km off the southern coast of Portugal, near Vila Real de Santo António.
In the statement Mariculture Systems Portugal made on LinkedIn to announce this new milestone, the company took the opportunity to give "a sincere thank you" to the authorities, research institutions, technical partners, and public stakeholders whose expertise, dedication, and guidance have made it possible.
MSP's Country Manager in Portugal, Peter Beringer, also commented along the same lines. "A big compliment and thank you to all who contributed to what initiated 5 years ago as a vision for Portuguese aquaculture with pioneering offshore technology Coralis. On to the next phase," he wrote on his LinkedIn profile.
One of the key contributors throughout the licensing process has been the company's Chief Strategy Officer, Fausto Brito e Abreu. Having joined the company at the beginning of 2024, he brought with him his experience as the Portuguese Government's former Director-General for Maritime Policy, something that, as he explained in the interview with WeAreAquaculture, did not make the process any less challenging.
As he then explained, the regulatory process has been complex – and somewhat surprising for him, experiencing the permitting process from within the private sector for the first time.
"Despite all the proactive policies and incentives we've worked on in government, and despite everyone being in favour, everyone loving the project, getting a project like this through all the bureaucratic steps is still incredibly challenging," Brito e Abreu noted.
Now, the licensing process is complete, and the news comes the same week we learned that Mariculture Systems has signed a sales and marketing agreement with the Zalmhuys Group. Both developments bring the arrival of MSP's Atlantic Ocean-farmed seabass and seabream to tables in Portugal and the rest of Europe one step closer.