Pioneering Portuguese RAS corvina farmer SEAentia hooks $16 million investment

SEAentia, a pioneering company in farming corvina (meagre) using Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), has announced a successful fundraising round of €16 million.

The investment was secured through Indico Capital Partners’ Blue Fund and the Mar2030 Program, which SEAentia says will enable it to accelerate the commercial production of Corvina by strengthening its team and embarking on the industrial phase of its project.

The investment deal was formalized last week at the Luso-French Economic Forum in Porto, an event attended by high-profile leaders, including Portuguese Prime Minister Luís Montenegro and French President Emmanuel Macron.

The newly acquired funding, which the company said could increase by an additional €8 million, will allow SEAentia to establish a large-scale aquaculture facility at the port of Peniche, north of Lisbon, Portugal. Once completed, the new infrastructure is expected to support an annual production capacity of 700 tonnes of high-quality corvina following strict sustainability criteria, the company said.

“This investment from Indico and the support from Mar2030 will make possible the world's first Corvina production facility using recirculating aquaculture systems," said João Rito, President of SEAentia, in a press release.

"This will enable us to meet growing demand and export this species on a large scale with high quality," Rito added.

Founded in 2017 in Cantanhede, Portugal, by João Rito, Nuno Leite, John Jones, and Sónia Rito, SEAentia plans to commence commercial production by 2028.

The company states its mission as "to produce high-quality Corvina, focusing on innovative methods such as the use of recirculating aquaculture systems to ensure a constant and responsible production cycle while guaranteeing animal welfare".

Stephan de Moraes, President of Indico Capital Partners, said the investment company was "excited to support the sustainable production of Corvina", and noted that with this latest investment in SEAentia, Indico's total investments have reached 100 million euros since 2019, "representing a historic milestone for Indico and reinforcing its role as one of the leading investors in innovative and sustainable projects in Europe.”

"It is inevitable that the majority of fish consumed on the planet will come from aquaculture, just as most land-based species are farmed rather than wild, but we must ensure that the future of aquaculture is synonymous with quality and sustainability - something we found in SEAentia," de Moraes stated.