Erlend Torgnes, Optimeering Aqua co-founder and CEO, and Sven Kolstø, OptoScale CEO.
Photo: Bioplan (Optimeering Aqua) / OptoScale.
OptoScale - an AI-driven technology provider offering real-time information for fish farming - announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Optimeering Aqua, the provider of Bioplan, an AI-powered production planning software.
Two of Norway's most ambitious aquaculture technology companies are thus joining forces with a clear and common goal: "to provide customers with better decision support, even more precise predictions, and a more powerful tool for planning future production."
"We've followed Optimeering Aqua closely for many years and have been genuinely impressed by both the technology they've developed and the insight they've built. By combining our strengths through this acquisition, we can give fish farmers more than just data. We can provide insights and recommendations, based on deep industry experience," OptoScale CEO Sven Kolstø stated in the joint press release announcing the acquisition posted on Bioplan's website.
According to that release, both OptoScale and Bioplan are experiencing strong growth and, although their complementary technologies have developed in parallel, the two companies have evolved in the same direction: working to make information more relevant, accessible, practical, and future-oriented.
Supplier of companies such as Andfjord Salmon, OptoScale, which recently received funding from US global software investor Insight Partners, has developed a market-leading camera technology for documenting growth, welfare, and lice conditions in real time.
Bioplan, for its part, has established itself as the market-leading product for production planning by integrating predictive modeling of growth, mortality, wounds, and welfare with its decision support models.
Likewise, the release also stressed that the interconnection of the two technologies will now be to the benefit of current and future customers. "Our customers want actionable insight, not just data," Sven Kolstø claimed.
"Camera data, prediction models and decision support systems must work hand-in-hand to answer questions like, 'How is the lice situation developing?' or 'What should we do with consideration to growth, mortality and welfare development?' These are the hard questions that combining our forces now enables us to answer in one solution," he pointed out.
"It takes a lot to develop technology that actually works in the field. It's about persistence and understanding what day-to-day life in the pens really looks like," Kolstø continued. "Bioplan is an extremely robust prediction and decision support engine, and we believe this combination forms the foundation for what will become the most accurate insight platform in the industry," the OptoScale CEO added.
The co-founder and CEO of Optimeering Aqua, Erlend Torgnes, spoke in the same vein. "With access to even more granular, precise and relevant data from OptoScale, our models become stronger. That means better answers for customers and new possibilities to understand what's happening in the pens. This takes our product development to the next level," he stated.
The joint release noted that Optimeering Aqua has provided technology-independent decision support to the aquaculture industry for more than 10 years. Its expertise and Bioplan technology will now become an integral part of the OptoScale toolbox.
After the partnership, Erlend Torgnes will continue as leader of an integrated Bioplan team, and customers will continue to work with the same people as always.
"Organizationally, we're becoming one company. Our teams are already working closely together, and this fall, Bioplan and its models will be more deeply integrated into OptoScale's platform. For customers, this means fewer systems to manage and better answers in one place, while still maintaining the flexibility to integrate the data from any provider," Sven Kolstø explained.
The acquisition, the release noted, is a strategic move to respond to an industry that increasingly demands integrated solutions, not only to document, but to predict developments and take proactive measures.
"Now we can help customers answer earlier—and more accurate—questions like: 'How many wounded fish will I have in three months?', 'How is the level of female lice developing?', or 'What is the best harvest plan, considering growth, production windows, and lice pressure?' No one has been able to answer these questions well enough, but now, together, we're on the way," the CEO of OptoScale concluded.
Both companies will already have a joint presence at Aqua Nor 2025, the seafood industry's leading meeting on technology, innovation, and sustainability, which will be held next week - August 19-22 - in Trondheim.
