Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

Does Australia have a proven commercial Aquaponics system.

This system in Sydney is supplying 20,000+ plants per week...

To one of the biggest Australian supermarket chains...



It is currently on track to produce 20 tonne of Barramundi per year...

Plans are to expand to a capacity of 100 tonnes of fish.. and 4 million plants.. per year.. on about a hectare footprint..

How long has this AP system been around? And is it the only one?

About nine months.. and it's the only one currently in Australia..

This does not count, hasent brake even yet. Sorry Australia, the title is still up for grabs.

I would like to learn more about what they are doing, any other info, links?

There may only be two of us in this club on this forum but I'm afraid I can't be much help.

My first commercial attempt fell over for no reason related to AP. Four years of struggling to get a usable planning permit all to do with reasons not related to AP. Finally had bulldozers on site ready to prepare the bench for the GH. Investor backed out and I had to send the contractor home.

Lots of money wasted but from my point of view the biggest cost was four years that I can't get back.

Since you seem to have gotten further perhaps you can share what you did and what didn't work.

bugger me, when did AP become a contest?

I'd be surprised if the big Sydney system being discussed hasn't at least broken even with the 5 year contract they've signed with said supermarket

They might not have because I have heard that they had some serious construction cost blow outs. Don't know if it is true or not but that would extend the pay back period.

The system is cash flow positive... so it's better than break even in terms of cash flow.. re operating costs

But seriously guys... you surely aren't suggesting a commercial system built from scratch... especially one of any scale...

Would be returning an ROI in 12 months...

And considering they're cash flow positive in less than 12 months... that's a pretty good start.. compared to most of the other "hobby farms" around the traps... being touted as "commercial aquaponics"....

Most of whom are probably only generating any real cash within their first 12 months.. by running expensive "training" workshops...

Couldn't agree more Rupe so I hope I wasn't included in that seriously.

Hats off to them they have done a great job so far and I'm confident they will only do better in the future.

I was really hoping my system would be up and running before theirs but such is life.

Hmm the shipping containers must be out the back right?

I tried to sell a lettuce from my first system but it went limp, then a catfish in my second system pricked my finger so I gave up.

God I love these pissing contests

Seams like a smaller club than I even expected. Maybe we should include any one who went to the bank for money to put into AP.

The most important thing I learnt is sutainabilty holds second place when it comes to profitability. Any system I do from now on must the configered for maxamum production, if I want to tone down the profit to be more sustainable so be it, but I am not starting on the sustainable end of the scale.

A five year contract! Without even starting construction, that's a hell of a head start, with a advantage like that it sure tips the scale in your favour. Sounds like the system is gared for lettus production, witch is another thing to help archive sucess, that is to depend on one product for comertial success.

One of my mistakes was to try grow as meny different crops as posable, surprisingly companion planting works out wellwhen it comes to maintenace but the sales and tracking of the profit is difficult when not mono croping. Eg, bring a crop of tomatoes and in the same time 5 crops of lettus, with 20lbs of fish feed, no problem, system remains in balance, bring 3 crops of lettus 1 crop of tomatoes and 2 sweet peppers, with 20lbs of fish feed, the difference in profit is substantial yet the fish are at 2 different weights, from the same amount of feed, even when taking good notes its hard to track where the difference is that you can replecate it the next crop. Keeping things as constant as you can is your best bet, that way you can track changes and reprocussions clearly.


To bad if its true about construction cost being higher than plan, this is some thing that needs to be addressed, proper planing of infusture and relating cost.