Taste of BC Aquafarms Inc. operates the oldest continuously operating recirculating aquaculture system raising salmon from egg to plate in North America
NANAIMO – Blue Star Foods Corp, announced that its wholly owned Recirculatory Aquaculture Systems (RAS) subsidiary, Taste of BC Aquafarms (TBC), has identified Deep Bay, British Columbia as the location for its planned larger-scale land-based steel-head salmon farm. TBC has also agreed upon material terms of a 20-year land-lease agreement for the Deep Bay property.
The land-lease agreement will be for a property of approximately 20 acres, with an option to expand onto an additional 10 acres. The property is within a designated Agricultural Land Reserve within the Regional District of Nanaimo which supports commercial aquaculture without additional re-zoning. The site sits upon the highly productive Quadra Sediments litho stratigraphic unit with an aquifer that produces high water volumes of exceptional quality suitable for land-based salmon production.
“Expansion facilities in British Columbia will utilize renewable, low-cost hydro-electricity which aligns with our core values of sustainable, low carbon emission seafood production. The temperate rainforest climate of western British Columbia offers a lot of suitable locations to support our aggressive expansion plans, said Ben Atkinson, CEO of TBC.
He further continued, “Our strategy of replicated modular expansion allows us greater flexibility in site selection in contrast to businesses that are looking to build 10,000 MT facilities or larger. This first property meets all of our criteria for the next phase of our expansion. This will be the first location for our 1,500 MT facility already in progress and will potentially support up to 4,500 MT annual production.”