- Aquabloom has developed a seaweed-based feed additive for aquaculture that has demonstrated up to 50% reductions in fish mortality during early trials.
- It acts as an immunomodulator, enhancing the health and resilience of the animal, leading to improved growth and survival rates even under suboptimal environmental conditions.
- The product addresses the rising challenge of disease in aquaculture, which is exacerbated by climate change, declining water quality, and restrictions on antibiotic use.
The product marks Aquabloom’s entry into animal feed after developing a range of seaweed-based biostimulants.
As aquaculture production continues to expand globally despite mounting environmental and disease pressures, the company believes its feed additive could play a role in supporting more resilient farming systems while opening up new economic opportunities across the value chain.
The development comes restrictions on antibiotic use in aquaculture and livestock are tightening.
However, disease incidence is rising due to climate-related factors, including changing rainfall patterns, rising temperatures and declining water quality.
These pressures have exposed a gap in effective, scalable alternatives to conventional treatments.
Speaking to AgNavigator, Aquabloom CEO Michelle Arsjad said the firm saw opportunities in the region’s fish and shrimp farming sectors.
This choice was driven by both market importance and the significant economic impact of high mortality rates in those systems.
“By the book, there are certain conditions that are really good for aquaculture but in reality, most people can’t get that. Water quality is going down; the incidence of diseases is getting higher and higher. And they are subjected to the weather as well. In these very unideal conditions, farmers face very significant losses,” said Arsjad at Future Fit Asia in Singapore this year.
Founded in 2024, Aquabloom aims to improve the livelihoods of seaweed farmers in Indonesia, around half of whom are women from marginalised communities. Today, it works with around 300 coastal seaweed farmers.
A health boost
The feed additive works as an immunomodulator, enhancing the overall health and resilience of animals.
“Healthier animals tend to eat more and grow faster, leading to improved average daily gains,” said Arsjad.
She said this broad-based mechanism is better suited to aquaculture systems, where farmers often face multiple disease pressures and inconsistent environmental conditions.
“There are alternative approaches, like bacterial solutions, but the challenge is that there are so many diseases, vectors, and conditions. A solution that works in Thailand doesn’t necessarily work in Indonesia or Malaysia.”
Working with smallholders, the company’s early trials on tilapia have shown mortality reductions of up to 50 per cent, alongside improvements in growth performance.
“In some cases, survival rates improved to the extent that farmers had to increase aeration in their ponds because they tend to overstock and not as many fish are dying as they expected,” said Arsjad.
Initial shrimp trials remain at an earlier stage but have demonstrated improvements in appetite and resilience, even under suboptimal conditions such as salinity fluctuations.
According to Arsjad, the additive can beinto feed at low inclusion rates of around 0.5%, making it relatively easy for farmers to adopt without significant changes to feeding practices.
Market strategy
The company has already begun small-scale sales and is exploring corporate partnerships to expand distribution.
Notably, the company was taking a different market approach with its feed additive.
Rather than building a standalone branded product, the company intends to sell the additive as an ingredient integrated into existing feed products.
This strategy reflects the structure of the feed industry, which is dominated by a small number of large players in each country, said Arsjad.
Partnering with established feed companies is viewed as more practical and scalable, and also easier for farmers who prefer familiar supply chains.
Despite Indonesia’s position as a major global producer, many of these farmers remain poor due to their reliance on a commodity market dominated by a handful of buyers that have to power to drive prices down.
Furthermore, farmers also face mounting risks from climate change, including rising sea temperatures and unpredictable weather that can lead to harvest failures.
The company identified that biostimulants were the most viable pathway to deliver both volume and better margins.
However, feed has proven to be more cost sensitive.
“People don’t generally use this type of seaweed for feed additives, because the margins are actually lower for feed additives. In order to see results, a lot of cost has to go into farming the seaweed, [and] a lot of cost into the method of extraction. What exists right now in the market is what is economically feasible… very crude extraction, or sometimes not even extraction,” said Arsjad.
At present, production remains at lab scale, and the economics are still being refined.
Arsjad acknowledged that margins were currently uncertain, but profitability was expected to improve with scale.
She estimated that reaching meaningful production scale will take one to two years, with a phased ramp-up approach.
Regardless, Arsjad emphasised the importance of developing its feed additive.
“I really think this is a problem worth solving. There are also many cases of feed additives that are essentially antibiotics in disguise, but regulators are likely to get better at detecting these over time. This is a clear and ongoing problem.”
