Ace Aquatec delighted by interest at AquaSur

Ace Aquatec’s head of sales and marketing, Mike Forbes, and operations and support specialist Andrew Gillespie both attended the event – the southern hemisphere’s biggest aquaculture trade show - in Puerto Montt last week.

Forbes said the firm made more than 100 new contacts, with a large percentage looking like very promising opportunities for new business in Chile, Panama, Brazil, Mexico and Australia.

He and Gillespie, a Spanish speaker, were promoting the company’s core product line of acoustic predator deterrents, its electric stunner that won last year’s AquaNor Innovation Award, and its latest innovations, the BioCam 3D and electric fish.

The BioCam 3D is a unique ‘time of flight’ camera that automatically captures thousands of 3D images to give a highly accurate biomass measurement, and the electric fish, first developed for a Scottish fish farmer, is an electrified decoy fish designed to give attacking predators a shock that deters them from attacking the cage again. Forbes said he and Gillespie made connections with several companies interested in distributing the camera and electric fish products in South America.

‘A real privilege’

“Our first experience of AquaSur could not have been better,” said Forbes, who chalked up another first for Ace Aquatec when he spoke at the Cold Harvest conference and trade fair in St John’s, Newfoundland in September.

“It was a real privilege speaking to many of the great people driving forward the South American aquaculture industry. 

“Each part of the world has its own unique set of challenges for farmers, and it was encouraging to hear that our focus on humane slaughter processing, accurate biomass measurement and effective protection from predators is just as relevant here as in the rest of the world.”

Predator deterrents

Ace Aquatec already has customers in Chile, and Forbes and Gillespie took the chance to reconnect with local distributors and were able to show some new contacts some of the company’s electric stunners and predator deterrents currently installed in the Puerto Montt area.

Although there was a British Chamber of Commerce stand promoting British business in Chile, Ace Aquatec was able to have its own separate space thanks to support from Scottish Enterprise.

Newly-appointed British ambassador to Chile, Jamie Bowden, stopped by the booth to hear more about the firm’s technology innovations.