Seafood investor Bluefront Equity is ramping up its efforts to digitize the seafood industry by investing in aquatech company Spillfree Analytics AS, which supports fish farmers with analysing and improving feeding processes and growth potential.
Spillfree develops and offers decision support and services for biological optimisation and feeding in aquaculture production. The company’s tools and tailor-made software is developed together with fish farmers and is built on years of practical experience and competence from the aquaculture industry.
‘The solutions offered by Spillfree offers will be instrumental in the ongoing industrialisation of the aquaculture industry. Spillfree can, through video and data analysis, contribute towards delivering word-class feeding performance, with lower costs for the fish farmer, improved fish growth and minimal impact on the marine environment. This powerful combination makes Spillfree a perfect fit for Bluefront,’ said Bluefront Equity partner Simen Landmark.
Spillfree was established in 2016 by Vidar Myhre, who following 20 years’ experience from the fish farming industry saw an enormous potential for increasing the production volume and value creation among fish farmers through video documentation, measurement and competence development to achieve increased fish growth and reduced feed waste.
In 2018, Spillfree merged with Aqua Analytics, which was established by veterinarian Arnfinn Aunsm
Spillfree’s headquarter is based in Trondheim, Norway. The company has 17 employees, including biologists, technologists, software developers and data analysts.
Spillfree’s product portfolio includes the analytics tool VideoTools, which is tailored for optimizing feeding performance; AquaTools, which is a decision-support tool for optimizing biological and economic benefits of aquaculture production; DrawTools, which simulate feeding situations; and LearnTools, which consists of interactive online courses for training and skills development within feeding. The next generation tools are under development and the first modules will be launched in 2023.
‘We estimate that less than five percent of the world’s fish farming facilities today utilize software and artificial intelligence to optimize their feeding processes,’ said Vidar Myhre, Spillfree’s managing director and also its largest shareholder.
‘The remaining 95% use a combination of visual observation from the edge of the fish cage and video-assisted manual surveillance from a control room. Our objective is to fully automate most of the analytics operations that are today carried out manually. New capital from Bluefront Equity will allow us to implement these plans even more quickly.’
