Armenia has clean upland water, cheap enough land and almost no land-based aquaculture. That combination is rarer than it sounds, and it is the reason we are here.
The aim is a farm that earns its keep and is useful to the country at the same time. That means fish on Armenian tables at prices ordinary households can pay, not only premium boxes for export. It means technical products and know-how for the producers around us rather than a closed shop. And it means working with, not against, Armenia's own long-term plan for the sector.
There is a conservation side too. Several native species are under pressure, and a controlled hatchery can support restocking instead of competing with what is left in the wild.
Three things separate a modern land-based farm from a conventional one. None of them is magic, all of them are engineering.
The first is that every tank has its own water loop. A problem in one tank stays in that tank, which in a shared system is exactly what does not happen. Separate loops also let us hold different species at different temperatures in the same building, and that is what makes a mixed programme possible at all.
The second is energy. Heat pumps and combined heat and power units are planned to hold the energy balance, water quality is measured continuously, and the recirculation returns most of the water to the tanks instead of to the river.
The third is that the project should be useful beyond our own fence. Armenia has very little land-based capacity. Whatever works here is worth passing on to other producers rather than keeping to ourselves.
That is the ambition. Whether it holds will be visible in the first full production cycle, not on this page.
ECOMAR stands as a pioneer in Armenian aquaculture, boasting an extensive array of fish species categorized by their value and ecological importance. We take pride in our sophisticated selection, ensuring a rich variety that caters to various preferences and market demands.
Huso huso
Huso dauricus
Huso huso × Acipenser ruthenus
Acipenser stellatus
Salvelinus alpinus
Paralichthys olivaceus
Hucho taimen
Thymallus thymallus
Salmo salar sebago
Oncorhynchus masou
Oncorhynchus mykiss
Salmo trutta
Epinephelus coioides
Brachymystax lenok
Salvelinus umbla
Coregonus muksun
Stenodus nelma
Coregonus migratorius
Coregonus lavaretus
Lates calcarifer
Sander lucioperca
Clarias gariepinus
Anguilla anguilla
Homarus spp.
Scylla spp.
Penaeus monodon
Cherax quadricarinatus
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
Oyster
A farm that sells only whole fresh fish leaves most of its margin on the table. The plant is planned to cover the full range, so that every part of the harvest finds a buyer.
On the traditional side that means salting, pickling, drying, hot and cold smoking, canning and preserves. Trimmings go into minced products, dumplings and meatballs, and what is left becomes fish oil and fish meal rather than waste.
The canned range is planned in three directions. Fish in oil, with smoked arctic char and smoked sturgeon as the lead products for the delicatessen trade. Fish in tomato sauce, closer to what Armenian kitchens already cook with, including stuffed cabbage rolls and minced fish. And fish canned in its own juices for buyers who want the plain taste and nothing added.
Beyond the cans there is the fresh and processed range: fillets, sausages including a sturgeon and catfish variety, hams and rolls. Some of it is an ingredient for a kitchen, some of it is ready to eat.
And there is the deep-frozen line for customers who need a long shelf life: steaks, fillets on the skin, whole gutted fish and whole fish with the head on. Freezing straight after processing is what keeps the quality in.
The farm is planned for the Hrazdan district, chosen for its water rather than for its address. The uplands there carry clean, cold groundwater, which is the single most expensive thing to fix if you get it wrong.
The buildings are planned as insulated modules rather than open ponds. That is what allows stable temperatures through an Armenian winter and summer alike, keeps the stock separated from wild fish and disease, and lets the farm produce at the same rate all year.
The layout foresees several halls, each with a large number of round tanks between six and ten metres across. Water is drawn from wells on the property and returned to the loop after treatment, so nothing is discharged into the local rivers. Nutrients the fish do not use are intended to feed hydroponic beds rather than the watercourse. These are planning figures from the current design and will be confirmed as the engineering progresses.
The water supply is a closed circuit built from components already in service at established European farms, not from prototypes. The design follows recirculation practice developed in Poland in the early two-thousands and since adopted widely across Europe.
Fry are planned to arrive in four separate batches a year. Spreading the intake keeps every stage of the farm working at a steady rate instead of running flat out for a few months and half empty for the rest.
The recirculation plant itself is modular and compact, which is what makes it possible to produce a lot of fish on a small footprint regardless of the weather outside, and to add capacity module by module rather than in one jump.
Inside, the facility is divided into zones that do not mix: broodstock, growing, processing, and the administrative and utility areas, each with its own access rules and hygiene regime.
A recirculating system costs more to build than a pond and more to run than a net pen. It earns that back in a few clear ways.
Fish grow faster because temperature, oxygen and water chemistry stay where they should be rather than following the weather. Broodstock matures sooner, which shortens the time until we are independent of bought-in eggs. Output is predictable, which matters when a retail chain wants the same quantity every week. And the farm uses a fraction of the water, land and energy an open system needs for the same tonnage.
The same control allows high stocking densities. The design figure for sturgeon in the grow-out stage is up to 70 kg per cubic metre, reached by saturating the recycled water with oxygen. Well-oxygenated fish also spend less energy on breathing, which improves the feed conversion ratio. The final figures will follow from our own trials rather than from a brochure.
Behind all of this sits a fairly standard set of components: pumps, a biofilter that turns ammonia into nitrite and then nitrate, a drum filter for solids, a protein skimmer, a carbon dioxide degasser, a nitrate filter, UV sterilisation, heat recovery from the outgoing water, oxygen injection and pH control. None of it is exotic. Making all of it work together, day in day out, is the actual craft.
Fish waste is a problem in one system and a fertiliser in another. Water leaving the tanks carries the nitrogen and phosphorus that plants need, so it goes into growing beds instead of into a treatment plant. The plants take up the nutrients, the water comes back cleaner, and the same volume does two jobs.
What grows there is planned as salad, herbs, berries and the usual greenhouse vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers. Soilless growing on mineral wool or expanded clay saves space, needs no pesticides in a closed house, and can be stacked vertically where floor area is tight.
The part that decides success is unglamorous: keeping pH and nutrient concentration in range. For herbs that means a pH between roughly 5.5 and 6.5. Get that wrong and the plants stop taking up what the fish provide.
A land-based farm runs on electricity around the clock, so every kilowatt hour generated on the property is one we do not have to buy. Solar covers the roof area we have. Wind is the option we are looking at on top of it.
Conventional small wind turbines are a poor fit for flat industrial roofs. The system we are evaluating works differently: a stationary airfoil that channels the airflow already moving over the building edge, with no rotating blades and far fewer moving parts to maintain. The manufacturer states that one unit can generate as much as roughly sixteen solar panels and that it starts working at low wind speeds. Those are supplier figures under their test conditions, and we will measure our own before we build the energy concept around them.
Toshiba H2One™: Pioneering Sustainable Hydrogen Solutions for Energy Demands
Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation (Toshiba ESS) has introduced the H2One™, an autonomous hydrogen energy supply system, to support SP Group’s research efforts in Singapore. Designed to address the challenges of limited land and growing energy demands, H2One™ integrates renewable energy sources to electrolyze water, producing hydrogen for CO2-free electricity and hot water generation.
Compact and versatile, the 20-ft container system features metal hydride storage, making it ideal for Singapore's constrained spaces. H2One™ has been operational in Japan since 2015, aiding electricity operators in managing demand fluctuations and optimizing energy management operations.
SP Group, Singapore’s national power grid operator, is conducting feasibility studies on H2One™ under local grid conditions, exploring green hydrogen as a viable energy solution. These studies aim to support Singapore’s goals for sustainable energy integration.
Toshiba ESS, with expertise in hydrogen technologies, envisions expanding its H2One™ solutions globally, fostering the adoption of clean hydrogen to transform energy networks.
ECOMAR is evaluating hydrogen-based generation and storage as part of the energy concept for its facilities, in dialogue with Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions. The configuration, the share of demand it would cover and the role of a grid connection as a fallback will follow from the engineering study.
Part of the process technology in the plan comes from work by Prof. Khachatryan on hydrogen-based water and feed treatment. We hold access to these methods and intend to use them, and it is only fair to say plainly which results come from laboratory and pilot work and still have to be confirmed at our own scale.
The first method treats and activates the water used in the hatchery. In trials it produced noticeably faster growth in fry and better survival than the sixty to seventy percent that is normal in conventional hatchery practice. The reported factor is between one and a half and two times the usual growth rate. We will publish our own figures once we have a full production cycle behind us.
The second is a feed additive that releases hydride ions in water. The reported effects are better weight gain on feed with less protein and fat, higher egg production and a more robust immune system. Again, trial results, not yet ours.
The third concerns processing rather than farming. Fish meat is treated in an electrochemically activated mineral solution, which disinfects it and extends shelf life without chemical preservatives. Caviar is treated in the same solution and seasoned with a hydrogen-based salt, reported to improve keeping quality and flavour. Whether we adopt this across the range depends on our own testing and on Armenian and EU food law.
The plant is planned around equipment that is standard in the European industry, for the simple reason that spare parts and trained staff are easier to find that way.
Cutting and filleting run on Marel lines, which give a higher yield from each fish than hand work and hold the portions within the tolerances retail buyers specify. Freezing follows immediately after processing, which is what keeps texture and nutrients in. Smoking and curing run on Reich systems, where the result is the same from the first batch of the day to the last. The cannery is planned around Toyo Seikan technology.
Packing and the finished goods warehouse sit in the same building, so the fish never leaves the cold chain between the tank and the lorry.
Cans are a bigger cost item in fish processing than most people expect, and buying them in means paying someone else's margin on every unit sold. The plan is to produce them at the farm on Alfons Haar equipment.
The format is a two-piece drawn and redrawn can in 0.14 mm DR8 material, among the thinnest on the market. Thinner walls mean roughly a fifth less steel per can, and the equipment supplier puts the annual saving per line in the seven-figure range. That figure comes from the supplier and assumes a line running at full capacity, so treat it as an upper bound until our own line has run for a year.
The sidewall bead and the base are shaped to keep the can rigid despite the thinner material and to stop easy-open ends from springing accidentally. Printing is planned in six colours on the finished bodies.
Alongside the land-based farm we are looking at enclosed floating units of the kind built by Hauge Aqua Solutions. The idea is a fully closed egg-shaped pen rather than an open net cage: the water is drawn from depth, the fish are separated from the surrounding lake, and waste is collected rather than released.
The attraction is obvious. A closed pen sharply reduces parasite exposure, makes escapes far less likely, and keeps organic load out of the water body. The manufacturer states a capacity in the order of a thousand tonnes per unit.
Whether such a unit is appropriate for Lake Sevan is a separate question, and not one we intend to answer on a website. The lake is under long-standing ecological pressure and any installation there would need its own environmental assessment and the agreement of the Armenian authorities. Until that exists, this is an option under review, not a plan.
An area of this size is difficult to watch from the ground. Fences and cameras cover the perimeter, but not the roofs, the well heads or the parts of the plot still under construction.
That is the job we intend to give to drones. A patrol drone flies a fixed route on a schedule, day and night, and does not get tired or distracted. It is not a replacement for the people on the ground. It is what lets a small team keep watch over a large area.
The system we are looking at works as a pair. The drone itself is light, flies its route without a pilot, records video, and lands and charges on its own. The base station houses it, charges it and processes what its sensors bring back, so a person only has to look at the exceptions rather than at hours of footage.
Selling through wholesalers alone means the customer never learns whose fish it is. So the plan for the years after commissioning is to reach people directly as well.
That means our own shops in the larger Armenian towns, and a catering arm with branded food trucks for places where a shop would not carry itself. How many and how fast will follow from what the farm actually produces. We would rather open five that work than fifty that do not.
ECOMAR is building a land-based fish farm in the Armenian highlands, and we are open about the fact that it is still a project rather than a running plant. If that interests you, talk to us early rather than late.
Buyers get a straight answer on what we can deliver and when. Investors get the current documentation together with the assumptions behind it, so the figures can be judged rather than believed. And anyone who simply wants to understand how a closed system works is welcome to ask.