New health centre to boost global research
CARGILL, the US owner of Ewos, opened its new innovation centre in Chile last month with a mission to develop new feed formulas to help fight sea lice.
The $10.5 million centre, in the Pacific town of Colaco, represents Cargill’s latest investment in the aquaculture industry since it bought Ewos in August 2015.
Experts from EWOS and Cargill will focus on developing functional fish diets and studying diseases that affect farmed salmon in Chile and other major producers around the world.
The innovation centre will have more than 30 scientists who will create tools and additional controls to fight both sea lice and SRS, which is caused by a bacterium responsible for 79 per cent of salmon mortalities in Chile and the main reason for antibiotics use.
The centre will be able to conduct four to five times more studies than before, increasing the global capacity for fish health research by 30 per cent.
‘Having our own fish health centre will accelerate our product development programmes, allowing us to quickly develop new customer solutions,’ said Einar Wathne, president of Cargill Aqua Nutrition.
‘We will be able to dig much deeper into the primary diseases and combat the risks they create for salmon producers, and also apply our learnings across multiple species of fish.’