Marifish.Inc

Marifish.Inc is a collaboration between the European Food Centre, Ghent University, the Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Research (ILVO), and Ostend Science Park. The project aims to partially transform the fish auction site in Ostend into an incubator space for start-ups and SMEs active in aquaculture and related fields in the Blue Economy. In addition, the site will be a pilot test environment / living lab with access to sufficient volumes of seawater of good quality. 

The exploitation of the incubator / living lab will be linked to an incubation program, where specialized advice will be provided for the SMEs in (zoo-)technological and business-related fields.

Marifish.Inc will initially focus on incubating and accelerating start-ups active in:

• Onshore farming of seaweed, fish, seafood and shellfish;
• Onshore processing of mariculture production at sea, e.g., preparing mussels / oysters for market;
• Depuration of imported mariculture products;
• Supporting technology to carry out the three previous activities (quality monitoring, big data, sensor technology, intelligent packing). 

In a later phase, the activity domain can be extended to derived products and services, such as products or molecules refined from marine raw materials or aquaculture products (e.g., from seaweed).

By clustering the knowledge and networks of the project partners, synergies will emerge between existing and new activities. The presence of strategic basic and applied research conducted by the knowledge institutions on site will stimulate the technological and business development of SMEs and will be an additional asset in attracting start-ups.

The Marifish.Inc project runs from October 1st, 2021 to December 31st, 2023 and was funded by the European Regional Development Fund.