The idea had its roots in
Central America, from work
Patrick Blow carried out on a
large scale tilapia farm, he
said, speaking at the GOAL
2013 conference in Paris.
The farm exported tilapia
fillets to the US, and Blow
saw the potential to apply a
similar model by farming
tilapia in Africa for the EU
market. That’s how Lake
Harvest was born in 1996,
with Blow charged with
building it.
In hindsight, the choice of Zimbabwe turned out not to
make for the easiest path.
“I thought it’d take two years,
I was there for twenty years.”
After a difficult period, and a buyout by Blow and
colleagues, the farm grew to a 10,000 metric tons fully
vertically interested operation, farming on the Lake
Kariba.
Some four years ago, the company then received backing
from African Century, a UK based investment fund
aiming to build a pan-African white protein producer.
The group has since expanded to Uganda and Zambia,
and “we see potential elsewhere”, said Blow, who also
works as aquaculture consultant to Marks & Spencer.
While the company started off supplying Europe, mainly
the UK, it now increasingly sees demand in sub Saharan
Africa, as people get wealthier.
Reflecting on the challenges faced along the way, Blow
mentioned the lack of trained workforce, and political
and economic instability.
But perhaps the biggest challenge, he said, has been the
lack of quality feed.
“The only way around it is to build
it yourself"
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