Page 16 - Food&Drink magazine April-May 2023

BLUE SKY
Leaving the pond
Aquatic AI founders Michael Storey and Andrew Walker say the freshwater crayfish marron has the potential to rival Western Australia’s rock lobster industry. Pippa Haupt speaks to the pair about their mission.
AQUATIC AI was born when university friends Michael Storey and Andrew Walker read an emerging industries report by AgriFutures. The pair had studied mechanical engineering together but gone into different fields. Storey ran a food delivery logistics start-up for eight years, while Walker was working with robotics and automation in the mining industry.
Even though neither of them had worked in agriculture, both were searching for a new project within the sector that would allow them to apply the skills and knowledge they had developed. Cue the AgriFutures report and Storey and Walker discovering the untapped potential of the freshwater crayfish, marron.
There was one major hurdle – the traditional farming method was not easily scalable.
“The reason we landed on marron was because it was an industry limited by space, labour, and all of the sorts of things you might think AgTech could solve,” says Walker.
AN ISSUE OF SPACE
Marron are usually stocked at two to four crustaceans per square meter of pond. Usually sold at 200 grams, it becomes apparent very quickly how much pond space is needed to effectively scale up.
Walker says there is a mindset in food and agriculture sectors where companies take what they’re already doing and find technology specialists who can automate the operations. But that wasn’t an option for marron farming.
Storey says they explored whether they could just throw more resources at the current industry, but kept coming back to ‘no’.
“Commercially, it doesn’t make sense to continuously go to an investor and ask for more land to keep growing marron,” he says.
The pair started thinking outside the pond; what about building up, rather than out. The idea matured into a goal to build a market for marron that would rival the half a billion dollar western rock lobster industry, using vertical farming.
“So what would that need to
ABOVE: Aquatic AI founders (L-R): Michael Storey and Andrew Walker
RIGHT: Big claws, big potential.
16 | Food&Drink business | April/May 2023 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au