The past ten years have seen sustainability become one of the most important factors in sourcing high quality produce, particularly in regards to fish. Tuna is becoming increasingly endangered, which means more and more chefs and home cooks are turning to alternatives. Yellowtail is still a relatively obscure fish in the UK but until recently fell into this same camp, often caught wild or farmed offshore around Australia. However, The Kingfish Company’s radical approach to super-sustainable farming in the Netherlands has changed that completely. This environmentally friendly producer uses an innovative system when farming its Dutch yellowtail to ensure the process is sustainable at every level and still produces the highest quality product.
Also known as kingfish or hiramasa, yellowtail is found predominantly in the Pacific Ocean and has become increasingly popular as an alternative to endangered species such as bluefin tuna and swordfish. However, over the years, the species has become associated with unsustainable farming practices, which not only lead to environmental issues such as water pollution, but also to a compromised product in terms of quality. Typically, yellowtail farms not only relied upon wild-caught fish for feed and (in some cases) used antibiotics and hormones to grow the fish in overcrowded tanks, but would also pump unfiltered, contaminated water back into the sea. This unsustainable style of yellowtail farming was regarded as standard until The Kingfish Company changed the game with its ground-breaking, ultra-renewable Zeeland farm based around a recirculating aquaculture system (or RAS).
The company was founded in 2015 by CEO Ohad Maiman, who saw the potential of RAS technology but felt it hadn’t been given a fair chance to prove itself. ‘What struck me when I first heard about RAS was that it’s like a greenhouse for fish,’ Ohad explains. ‘It has similar advantages in that it’s a controlled environment with optimal conditions, and it essentially gives you the ability to produce food where it is not otherwise possible.’ Despite other smaller RAS farms having failed in the past, largely due to the technology not being fully developed and companies having to cut costs, Ohad felt that, if done right, with sustainability put at the forefront, it had the potential to change the way that fish was farmed.