Planning and operation

Production

The farm produces sea bream fingerlings and market sized sea bream and sea bass. Sea bass fingerlings come from the Pila hatchery.

The one-year production is about 15-20 million sea bream fingerlings, 2-300 tons of product, of which 1 million remain in the farm for ongrowing.

The farm buys practical feeds, tanks, pumps, equipment for the floating cages (nets, diving equipment and consumables) and laboratory reagents.

The fingerlings (2-10 g) are sold mainly to National and International farms for ongrowing. Two commercial sized fish (350 and 1000 g) are produced and sold to large scale retailers, in particular Coop and Ca’ d’oro. A small amount is sold to the local restaurants.

The farm is equipped with its own working fish room and insulated trucks for transporting live fish. Fish for large scale retail trade are prepared and transferred in ice.

The production cycle lasts about 18 months to reach the minimal commercial size. Specific larger fish sizes are supplied based upon market requests.

During the year the most important working operations are:

• breeders management
• size selection
• equipment maintenance
• control of water quality and of the power supply of working plants
• according to large scale retail trade protocols, product quality assessment is performed constantly

The occupational level of the employees is high because among them there are skilled workers, fishermen and divers, graded in biology and animal production.

The farm closely collaborates with the fish biology research group and aquaculture production group from the Universities of Padua and Udine.

The farm collaborates profitably with the Academic Institutions for the student’s job placement stages (350 hours). Some of the students have also been employed.

Employees have very specific roles and responsibilities ranging from productions managers to units, quality and maintenance referents; also divers and vessels crew are daily involved in the cage farming. Total number of employees varies from 30 to 40 people depending on the presence of seasonal employees.