ItÆs alive!
Working with Maersk, Denmark's Aqualife develops system for shipping live shellfish in ocean containers.
By Chris Dupin
| `Aqualife container with tanks connected |
A Danish company, working with Maersk Line, has developed a new method for transporting live seafood that could potentially revolutionize the movement of shellfish such as lobsters, crabs, clams, oysters and mussels.
Under development for the past decade, the service, offered by Aqualife Logistics, will allow seafood companies to move their product by sea rather than air.
The company, which has been moving cargo experimentally for several years, has begun commercial operations, moving lobsters from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to the town of Urk in the Netherlands, site of one of the biggest seafood auctions in Europe. A market center for the seafood industry, it is located inland, strategically between two of Europe's biggest ports, Rotterdam and Bremerhaven.
Philip Bresling, a business development manager for North America at Aqualife, said the company hopes to rapidly roll out its service to other trade lanes.
'Hopefully some day we will be able to connect the entire world,' he said.
The company, publicly traded on the Nasdaq OMX stock exchange in Copenhagen, touts its service as not only being more economical, but as environmentally friendly, since less fuel is consumed and less carbon dioxide produced when cargo moves by sea rather than by air.
'Every time a kilo of fresh or live seafood is airlifted across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean, the environment is polluted with 3.4 kilos of carbon dioxide ' and this takes place on a huge scale,' said Lars Nannerup, the company's chief executive.
About 15,000 tons of lobsters are shipped by air from North America to Europe, resulting in the production of about 51,000 tons of carbon dioxide. By converting that cargo to ocean freight, carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced 90 percent, the company said.
The 'green' marketing is perhaps appropriate, since Bresling said the company has its origin in the decades old campaign to improve water quality in the Limfjord in Denmark by cultivating shellfish to reduce algae.
The effort was successful in improving both the quality of the waterway, and making Limfjord renown for the quality of its mussels and oysters.
As production grew, an organization called the Danish Shellfish Center began to explore ways to better market its shellfish and hired Nannerup as a consultant.
With a background in the food and consumer goods industry, with companies such as Haagen-Dazs, Pepsi and the butter company Dolina Scandi, Nannerup succeeded in selling the Danish shellfish to restaurants and other buyers in Europe.
But while the Limfjord shellfish were of excellent quality, the company found it was sometimes difficult offering consistent delivery because shellfish farms might be closed because of storms or other events.
So the Danish Shellfish Center looked at developing a storage system where it could create a 'buffer stock' of mussels.
A company, Fjords ApS, was created to trade shellfish and at the same time tested various solutions for fresh seafood storage and logistics.
Aqualife developed a plastic shellfish tank through which water could be exchanged, filtered and aerated so the seafood could be held and kept in optimal condition for long periods of time and a buffer stock maintained.
In 2005 Maersk Line became involved in the effort and together with Aqualife developed a system for moving seafood in containers.
Tests to move snow crab from Greenland and lobsters from Canada to Denmark by ship were conducted in 2005-2006, and last year launched the first transport corridor moving lobsters through Montreal to Holland.
Aqualife has a fleet of 15 containers that it plans to put into service, which will move on Maersk ships in its transatlantic TA4 service that added a Halifax call in mid-May. The company plans to move two or three containers filled with lobsters on each voyage.
Each refrigerated container has 20 of the Aqualife tanks, which are essentially large plastic barrels that take up one pallet position and can be easily moved in and out of a container with a forklift.
Bresling explained that instead of delivering their lobsters to an airport, suppliers will bring their seafood to Aqualife's 'Aquaport,' where they will be loaded into barrels where water is exchanged, chilled and aerated as in an aquarium.
The water temperature is reduced to just above freezing, which slows the lobsters' metabolism and brings them into a state similar to hibernation. The lobsters can then be transported and kept in top condition for four weeks without the necessity of water exchange as long as the water is oxygenated. This also potentially allows transportation of multiple types of seafood in the same container because water is not moving between the different tanks.
Aeration is done with a compressed air system as lobsters cross the Atlantic, so there are no additional mechanical systems besides the standard container refrigeration unit. The sturdy aquariums are made of food grade plastic and designed to withstand extreme tilt and roll in rough seas.
Once the container arrives in Rotterdam, it will be trucked to Urk.
The seafood is unpacked, checked and hooked up to a new filtration and water exchange system. The seafood can then be immediately shipped to European buyers or stored at Aqualife's Urk facility and gradually released to the market.
Bresling said the plan is for Aqualife to roll out its service on additional trade lanes and to move other products such as bivalves. The company has already done experimental shipments, but he said it has to make sure it is in compliance with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and European food legislation.
The company is starting with crustaceans, he said, because they don't have the same ability to carry bacteria or algae like bivalves. He said caution must be taken to ensure invasive species aren't carried from one continent to another. To prevent this, the company either recycles water or filters it before disposal in sewage systems. As a further caution, it also locates its Aquaports inland, away from the ocean.
The company has experimentally moved a wide variety of species: European brown crabs, snow crabs and lobsters, mussels, several sorts of clams, and oysters.
He said it might be possible to develop two-way flows of seafood on some trade lanes, though he noted Europe is a net importer of many sorts of seafood.
The amount of seafood that can be carried in each container varies depending on species ' it is possible to transport four to seven tons of lobsters and 12-15 tons of bivalves.
Aqualife does not take title to the product it sells and never will, Bresling said.
'We have logistical partners ' Maersk and other freight forwarders ' and our job is to facilitate transportation,' he said. The company is working exclusively with Maersk, which he said is a joint patent holder of the company's equipment.
In 2011 the company hopes to set up operations on the West Coast of North America so it can ship to Asia, and he said the company hopes to also set up other Aquaports on the East Coast so it can reach other parts of Europe with other products, including Maine lobsters or clams from New Jersey.
Bresling said there are also West Coast products that are in big demand in Europe, and seafood could be moved from the West Coast by rail or truck or ship, replenished at Aqualife facilities on the East Coast, and then shipped onward to Europe
While the company says the shellfish market is large enough to keep it busy, it has also looked at whether it might be possible someday to develop a system for transporting finfish by container.
