Press Release
Bergen, Norway – April 2nd, 2018 – HATCH is an Aquaculture-focused start-up Accelerator Programme launched by Alimentos Ventures, an early-stage aquaculture investment firm. Our Programme bridges the gap between innovative ideas and their commercialisation by helping startups become investment and market ready via the rapid development of their aquaculture market entry.
HATCH´s vision is an aquaculture industry capable of growing sustainably to meet global demand. This is done by connecting top teams and their ground-breaking aquaculture innovations with expertise and funding in order to reduce the costs and risks inherent to aquaculture growth and development. We also provide and foster a global go-to community for entrepreneurs, commercial players, researchers, and investors alike.
The first HATCH Programme is delivered in Bergen, Norway, from April – June 2018, together with our local partners, Bergen Teknologioverføring AS (BTO), where our accelerator space is located, and the Seafood Innovation Cluster. HATCH’s next cohort will be located in Cork, Ireland in Q3/Q4 2018 and HATCH will further expand to Southeast Asia in 2019.
In announcing the details of the first cohort of 8 companies, Carsten Krome, HATCH CEO said, “this is truly a global programme with the teams selected originating from 7 different countries, as far away as India, Thailand and Indonesia to the USA, Norway, Portugal and the UK. We are so excited to be working with these 8 exceptionally talented teams, all seeking to deliver on their global ambitions. For some, their technologies are complimentary too, so we are anticipating significant synergies being achieved between the cohort companies”
“We have an ambitious schedule to get through over the next 3 months with the teams. Over that time we will welcome many of the world’s leading aquaculture experts, successful entrepreneurs and investors to Bergen in order to add significant value and accelerate the development of the teams by providing technical expertise, focus and incredible business experience”, says Wayne Murphy HATCH COO.
HATCH is proud to announce the following companies have been selected to be part of the spring 2018 cohort from April 2nd – June 28th:
AlgaePro, Norway
AlgaePro AS is a Norwegian company based in the Bergen region. AlgaePro AS promotes industrial production of microalgae and sales of the algal biomass for end products, such as nutritional supplements, animal feed, cosmetics, feedstock, bio-plastic and fertilizer.
Aqua Connect, India
Aqua Connect’s Omni channel marketplace provides market access to Indian aqua-farmers to enable increased access to quality hatcheries, export markets & allied farm input products. They focus on addressing the sustainability issues at 5.7 billion USD aqua-farming products marketplace.
Their Aqua-locate AI platform aims to map the requirements of each stakeholder (Farmer, Hatchery, input manufacturers and Exporters) in the ecosystem and matches them based on their requirements. Its superior predictive algorithm and crowd-sourced seed performance data also helps farmers find the best performing seeds for the shrimp culture from over 150 hatcheries in India. Currently, About 3000
Vannamei shrimp farmers are working with Aquaconnect to connect with the marketplace.
Finless Foods, US
Finless Foods is producing high-quality seafood without mercury, plastic, antibiotics, or added growth hormones. They’re also doing it without fishing or any animal cruelty, by producing just the meat of an animal using cellular biology. This approach is creating a fresh and clean supply of previously expensive and unhealthy seafood products, without any of the downsides. It’s real fish, without the catch.
Jala, Indonesia
JALA is a shrimp farm solution on your hand. We provide a farming assistance where we combine monitoring device and a software platform where farmers can manage their farm based on data driven to boost yield and create a sustainable business. By using JALA, the farmers could monitor the water condition of their farm and get actionable insight then execute the appropriate treatment for their pond according to the sensory information so they could minimize the risk of failure, they also could manage the farm operational from financial projecting, planning, scheduling, and reporting to increase their yield.
Manolin, US
Manolin is bringing a digital solution to accelerate the sharing of resources between companies to better treat, manage, and prevent sea lice outbreaks in the salmon industry. We’re creating a platform that
streamlines the coordination between salmon producers and service providers to provide faster responses towards the prevention and treatment of health outbreaks. Using digital tools (mobile devices, dashboards), our platform will notify farmers of activities occurring throughout the industry and accelerate the communication available across farms, the government, and service entities.
Sensaway, Portugal
Sensaway is a new company that will be the bridge between sensors and monitoring systems. Sensaway will allow aquaculture companies to add sensors to their current network, aiming to improve sensor data quality, reduce maintenance costs and empower the end-user with an easy to maintain solution.
Founded by two Aerospace Engineers, it became clear that the harsh environment and electrical power conditions found at aquaculture companies reduced data quality and sensor durability.
This inspired the team to develop a product that gives sensors Wi-Fi connectivity while being energy efficient, portable and guaranteeing high quality data at a competitive price.
Tradeit, UK
Tradeit is a online seafood marketplace connecting the seafood industry by providing a full-end trading platform to allow importers and exporters to interact through a collaborative business model. Both the import and export sectors leverage their brand identity and origin by adopting a cohesive online presence. Exporters and importers participate by adopting a one-brand approach to a larger target audience of B2B clients.
VerifiK8, Thailand
The growing population on the planet as well as its environmental and social boundaries, foster efforts to do more with less. In Asia 80% of farmers are small-holders and do not have access to sustainable income streams. VerifiK8 brings a transparency tool to connect all stakeholders of the supply chains to make sustainable sourcing efficient, affordable and credible.
Verifik8 is a Thai based technology and market-driven solution to monitor and verify both social and environmental performances in the food supply chains. It provides data intelligence and analytics for robust suppliers’ screenings and monitoring international operations.
VerifiK8 re-invent compliance in mining data from the first mile throughout the supply-chain with a generic data-mining system and corresponding algorithms to match with any reporting framework and buyers’ requirement scheme.