UTAS-Nexus Aquasciences winds up

An aquaculture venture between the University of Tasmania (UTAS) and a Malaysian company has been wound up.

UTAS-Nexus Aquasciences Pty Ltd was a joint venture company between UTAS and Malaysian aquaculture tech firm Nexus Aquasciences Sdn Bhd (NASB).

The venture was created to commercialise closed-loop lobster aquaculture.

According to its website, UTAS Nexus said it had achieved what it set out to do.

“The world-class aquaculture research has demonstrated at pilot scale the ability to reproducibly rear in controlled facilities three varieties of lobsters - Southern Rock Lobster, Eastern Rock Lobster, and Tropical Rock Lobster - from eggs through to juveniles ready to be matured in grow-out cages,” it says on its website.

“Never before has a ‘closed-loop aquaculture system’ for rock lobster been achieved at production levels which are orders of magnitude higher than the egg-to-adult survival rates seen in the wild.”

“UTAS Nexus Aquasciences' technology has solved the many long-standing challenges (nutrition, disease, storage and broodstock optimisation) that have stymied the scalable lobster aquaculture industry.”

In a Federal Court of Australia virtual hearing, Registrar Tim Luxton said there had been a breakdown in the relationship between UTAS and NABS.

Mr Luxton said the technology UTAS Nexus had created had not been adopted commercially and that only one staff member had remained with the company.