Smolt sexing system wins Innovation Award at Aqua Nor

GreenFox Marine, which has developed an automated technology for gender sorting and comprehensive health screening of salmon smolts using medical ultrasound and artificial intelligence (AI), was today awarded the prestigious Innovation Award at the Aqua Nor trade show in Trondheim, Norway.

The Norwegian company’s technology, which is seamlessly integrated into existing vaccination lines, enables simultaneous sorting by both gender and various health parameters – all in one efficient and fast process.

By combining gender sorting with integrated, non-invasive health screening, the technology offers insight into both external and internal health conditions. This gives the possibility of early sorting of weak/sick fish with low robustness early in the production process.

Raising the profile

“Winning the award means a lot to us because we are quite a small company with new technology, so in this way the market can know us and all this technology,” said GreenFox Marine chief executive Erling Aspen.

“Due to winning this award we put focus on the important tools that are available today to the market to get reduced mortality, improve fish health, and also improve production efficiency.

“Doing gender sorting, we see that fish health improves because we can see in te cages that are gender sorted that we have reduced mortality, the fish have fewer wounds and injuries. You will also get increased growth and can optimise your production according to this.

“People can come and visit us at stand F-530.”

Very good timing

Kjersti Jullum, sales and marketing manager of GreenFox, said: “Being chosen by the jury as winners of the award can contribute to more visibility for us and strengthen the knowledge the market has about us. In the autumn we will launch the next generation of our machine, so the timing of this award is very good for us.”

There were three companies shortlisted for the award. The other two were UltraAQ AS, which has developed an autonomous net washer that operates fully independently without an umbilical, and Circmar AS, which has developed a sustainable packaging solution intended to replace the current model using expanded polystyrene boxes and wooden pallets.

Previous winners of the Innovation Award have included Dundee aquaculture technology developer Ace Aquatec, for its pre-slaughter in-water fish stunner, and biotechnology company Benchmark Holdings (health division) for its CleanTreat filtration system that cleans water used in lice treatments on wellboats.