One World - One Method
Give the oceans a break
go land based fish with Pond!
The exploding population of the world needs nutritious food produced without negative impact on people and the environment. That´s why aquaculture is the worlds fastest growing food sector. Pond is one of the drivers in the field with a focus on practical solutions based on Nordic reliance and expertise in nutrition and food technology. Pond is a Swedish company with focus on small scale aquaculture in rural and urban areas around the world.
Why Fish?
Fish use less water, energy and feed than any land living animal. Fish is furthermore nutritious and liked all over the world. But we should - to a greater extent - leave the wild fish in the water and go aquaculture. Why?
Problem
The global appetite for blue protein is growing rapidly. Our oceans and lakes can´t deliver due to overfishing and environmental degradation. Now the world sets its hope to aquaculture. World Bank, FAO United Nations and other authorities predict a tremendous growth of farmed fish. One major problem is that ordinary aquaculture is based on marine protein and fatty acids. It also destroys the environment with genetic contamination and pollution. There is also a disturbing imbalance in capacity. 93% of cultured fish comes from Asia. Just a little more than 1% from Africa.
Market size
Local fish and greens are high in demand. In Sweden 90% of farmed fish is imported. 70% of the vegetables are imported. Aquaculture is expected to grow immensily the coming decades. And the species predicted to grow the most are not salmon but clarias, carp and other omnivores and herbivores.
We propose indoor farming and container farming of fish. Always in intimate relation to plant production. We are eager to boost growth but not within the ordinary business model that risk biodiversity, climate goals and karma. Omnivors like our catfish are tasty and superior in the contest for sustainability.
Tasty, sturdy, fast growing – that’s clarias!
Pond work with land based aquaculture. To skip open cages in the lake or ocean is good in itself as landbased mean syou can control the waste in form om nutrition and patogens a well as genetic contamination. Salmon escape and destroy the wild fish stocks. Just landbased is not enough. We believe that the future kind om fish to farm is herbivores and omnivores like clarias, tilapia and karps. These fish an easily fed with feed based on waste streams and plants from fields around the corner instead of fish feed based on fish that should be left in the ocean! Carnivores are more difficult to feed with local feed. That’s it.
Sweden needs 160 000 tons of seafood to follow the national guidelines for nutrition.
Today we eat 130 000 tons
of which only 30 000 tons come from Sweden.
Pond DNA
Niklas Wennberg the CEO and founder of Pond has a long track record as a Swedish environmentalist, having spent the last 30 years developing standards and models for urban and rural resilience with food as key factor. Niklas has been engaged by SIDA to introduce ecolabelling of fish in capture fisheries and aquaculture in ten Southeast Asian countries. He also chaired the process delivering the first Scandinavian ecolabelling system for fish from Nordic waters.
In 2008 Niklas decided to skip the tie and focus on urban agriculture. He bought rubber boots in order to embrace messy prototype workshops built up in urban reality – not in labs. For starters he and his team in 2009 gathered Christians, Jews and Muslims and together they introduced the first inner city pigs in Göteborg, Sweden. Pigs converting lawns into kitchen gardens is now a normality in urban Göteborg. Niklas and his operation moved on to new rubber-booty fields of engagement alongside with teaching at Göteborg University and Chalmers Architectures Masters program - Design for Sustainable Development.
The pigs are omnivores and perfect for transforming urban food waste into prosciutto. From the start the aim was to introduce “water pigs” in Göteborg doing the same thing as the four legged ones.
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The persons behind Pond have unique experience from various industrial fields including development of medical equipment and from food production in Asia, Africa and Europe. One of the owners built and today manages Swedens largest Golf course and has been a leading character in transforming municipalities to social and environmental high performance for 30 years. President of the board has for many years been a major authority in large scale production units for fish, greens and energy.
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Niklas with team opened Swedens first urban fish farm 2014. Several Swedish ministers have visited Ponds different set ups as well as researchers from NASA and students from all over the world. We feel that they all share a wish to propell a protein revolution. Together we can make a difference when shifting from industrially bred cattle, chicken and pigs towards food culture based on vegetables and fish farmed near the consumer and with zero antibiotics and almost zero waste. One world one method.
Pond have been engaged by NASA-researchers at several occasions to discuss fish farming in odd places. Like on Mars.
Pond is the small company with impressive voice.
We are glad to be invited to the major stages.