Bangkok, September 27, 2018 - Charoen Pokphands Foods PCL (CPF) is shifting towards organic shrimp farming with high biosecurity technologies and eco-friendly to serve new consumer trend as well as ensure low risk and even more productive farm that will be a role model for CPF’s shrimp business through small-scale farmers in a very near future.

Mr.Premsak Wanuchsoontorn, Executive Vice-President for Aquaculture Business at CPF, explained the direction of CPF shrimp farms that it is investing new farming technique to make sustainable shrimp farm. To achieve a sustainable level, the company must mitigate the risk factors from external environments such as disease. This farming technique will response to new consumer trend.

CPF set up its prototype farm in Bangsrakao, Chantaburi (245 km. east of Bangkok), covering 600 Rai (960 000 square meters). It is a closed-operation shrimp farms where the company works relentlessly to develop farming techniques. The knowledge from this prototype farm has transferred to other CPF shrimp farming areas and the local farmers.

The farm was initiated as part of the company effort to make sustainable growth and manage potential threats to shrimp farming process. In addition, many experimental works have been conducted to response growing consumer demand on food safety, security, traceability and sustainable natural resource consumption.

The prototype vannamei farm is designed to prevent external impacts such as disease carriers and global warming factors. The farm uses recycle water, which recirculation in the farming system. The method can massively reduce water consumption from external source and, at the same time, reduce risk of contamination from intake water.

The water use in the farming process is filtered by Ultra Filtration (UF) system. The UF system has a pore size of 0.02 micron, allowing it to effectively filter out contaminations even as small as virus. Moreover, the Biofloc Technology is one of the important technique by filling in microorganism into water to treat diseases and residue in the pond. It also becomes additional high nutritious feed source for shrimp.

“Those two techniques will not only ensure zero waste water but also prevent business risk from disease. It will guarantee fresh and safety shrimp production without antibiotics,” Mr. Premsak said.

Mr. Premsak pointed that shrimp fences and uneaten feeds produce ammonia and nitrite toxicity, which can cause great harm to shrimps. Compared with the traditional process, shrimp farmers has to pump up water from natural sources, which would carry toxics or harmful microorganisms into farms.

 ‘The Microbial community in Biofloc can damage these residues. As a result, the farming process uses less water and become nearly zero waste. Nowadays, the farm can reduce water usage from 5-7 cubic meter to 1.5 cubic meters per kilogram of shrimp produced” Mr.Premsak explained. A

CPF’s water treatment techniques together with probiotic farm management also help the company to improve water condition without using any chemicals for water treatments, making the farm purely organic. As a result, the closed operation farm yields up to 8 tonnes of shrimp per rai compare to the tradition farming’s output of 3 tonnes per rai.

Mr. Premsak said that CPF will transform all of its shrimp farms to indoor facilities. “Currently, 15% – 20% of the company farms in Thailand are indoor. We expects a complete transformation in probably the next 5 years,”

He added that shrimp farming in the future will be more depended on automation to save man hours and reduce contamination from human touch. The farm is now equipped with several automatic systems.

“Shrimp farmers are reluctant to invest in the closed-indoor farming due to high investment. Bangsrakao’s farm is working on the technique to lower the cost. We believe that, eventually, all shrimp farms will be indoor farm to mitigate the risk of diseases,” he said.