Picture: Ana Silva (Chief Innovation Officer), Christoph Podes (Chief Operating Officer)
How the SORTpro delivers value
In the world of aquaculture, the quest for producing more with less is ongoing. The need to select the ‘best’ fish more efficiently and accurately is evident as the industry seeks to optimize production.
Traditional approaches such as selective breeding, and manual or low-tech sorting methods have been fundamental. However, these methods often fall short in speed, scalability, and can be complex and costly to manage. This has led to fragmented operations that struggle to keep pace with growing demand and biological challenges.
By integrating advanced trait selection and sorting technologies, efficiency increases massively. This leap is largely due to enhanced capabilities in gender sorting and other trait classifications, which lead to faster production cycles, reduced waste, and minimized resource use, thereby lessening footprint.
Our approach revolutionizes fish sorting, shifting the paradigm from traditional, fragmented, slow, and labor-intensive methods to an automated, high-tech process.
The SORTpro boasts an accuracy rate of close to 100% for kjønn sorting, which stands above the typical industry standards for manual* sorting of 90-95%. This increase in precision is not merely a statistical improvement; it translates directly into real-world efficiency and reduced risk of error in fish sorting. Such high accuracy ensures that the gender sorting process, which can increase profits by over 15%, is consistently reliable, maximizing the potential return on investment for our clients.
Our technology is uniquely consistent. It operates with the same level of precision regardless of the operator, time of day, or day of the week. This feature eliminates the variability often seen in manual processes and ensures that performance remains high from Monday morning to Friday afternoon without any degradation in quality or output.
Aquaticode’s solution is also equipped to detect and classify several fish conditions — including e.g. maturation and deformities — all in a single operation. Our advanced system can identify and aggregate the score of multiple (minor) deformities in a single fish, a capability that is crucial for comprehensive quality control and surpasses the typical industry standard which may only discard fish with one severe deformity.
SORTpro also offers unparalleled adaptability to meet specific client needs. For example, we can adjust the threshold settings to target the exact percentage of fish with any given discard level (e.g. removing the ‘worst’ 5%), allowing operations to customize their quality control processes to their precise specifications.
The solution generates detailed statistics on the traits it identifies, providing invaluable data for farm management. Statistics can help optimize breeding decisions, improve stock management, and enhance overall planning. This level of detailed analytics transforms raw data into actionable insights, driving better decision-making and operational efficiencies.
Automation of these processes not only enhances production control and flexibility in changing production schedules but also significantly boosts biosecurity. By reducing the need for human handling, we minimize the risk of disease transmission, further safeguarding the health and quality of the stock.
Looking towards the future, Aquaticode is continuously innovating. We are developing additional features for advanced health diagnostics and assessing fish welfare and performance. These updates are seamlessly integrated into our SORTpro systems, ensuring that our clients always have access to the most advanced technology available.
*Manual gender sorting of salmon only happens in Chile, not in the other salmon markets due to labor costs.