Alltech Coppens launches aquaculture inventor program

Fish feed manufacturer, Alltech Coppens, says it is looking to discover and support ideas developed by fish farmers for fish farmers, with its new inventor project.

Ideas can come from all aspects of aquaculture, it said, including hatchery, feeding, growing, catching, processing or marketing.

The Netherlands headquartered business is encouraging farmers, located anywhere in the world, to enter their inventions by emailing inventor@alltech.com​​. The closing date is looming though. It is Thursday, September 5, 2019.

Farmers whose ideas are selected will have the opportunity to showcase their invention to leaders and peers of the aquaculture industry, at Aqua InDepth, the company’s conference taking place in Eindhoven, the Netherlands from September 30 to October 2.

The winner of the Inventor program will win €2,000 worth of Alltech Coppens feed as well as support from the Alltech Innovation team to help them develop their idea and communicate it to the aquaculture industry.

'We want this to be a real innovation'

When asked if the competition was only open to farmers, Pat Charlton, CEO of Alltech Coppens, told this publication: “​No, we welcome any entrants; however, we do want to focus on the smaller, more practical ideas, and not the large multi-million-dollar innovations. Also, we want this to be a real innovation and not just simply an idea.”​

In terms of the kind of support the winner will get from the Alltech Innovation team, he said that would be somewhat dependent on the winner and the innovation.

“Maybe the inventor doesn’t want to commercialize their idea. However, if the winner and the invention warrant further development, then we have a wealth of global experience to help develop, promote and market the invention. We have run our own Pearse Lyons Accelerator program for the last three years and have developed a team of both internal experts and external consultants who could help with this project based on the requirement needed.”

Isn’t one month from launch of this program to submission deadline slightly restrictive in terms of timing to create awareness and allow for enough submissions? 

“Yes, this is short notice; it has been a bit of a last-minute idea, but we want to tie this in with our global Aqua InDepth meeting in October. If this year’s competition is a success, we would like to make it an annual event and next year obviously we will give this more time," ​added Charlton.