About

The UK Sustainable King Prawn Project is exploring the potential to create a new, sustainable and more environmentally-friendly king prawn farming sector using renewable energy technology.

It aims to help position the UK as a global frontrunner in this field and provide innovative diversification opportunities for UK aquaculture and agriculture.

The project will:

• Model and commercially trial the production of tropical king prawns in the UK using fully land-based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS), co-located with sustainable heat sources (e.g. solar, Anaerobic Digestor plants, geothermal) to warm the water needed to grow the prawns.
• Assess the optimal conditions needed to grow the healthiest and most nutritious prawns indoors, in the laboratory and at commercial scale.

• Model the cost effectiveness of using farming land in the UK to grow king prawns, instead of more traditional crops, and investigate the value of the wider environmental benefits that this switch in behaviour could bring about.
• Investigate other circular-economy opportunities (by transforming waste from the growing process into input for other activities) to further improve production and cost-effectiveness for both seafood and land-based farmers.
• Explore the wider infrastructure needed to establish and support a major UK home-grown king prawn production sector (e.g. a UK hatchery for king prawn larvae, workforce training, R&D support and public education).

The project has strong links with industry, including partnerships with aquaculture producers, Ixora Energy, Cargill, Sainsbury’s and Lyons Seafoods. It is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI; £2 million between 2022-2026), as part of its Transforming UK Food Systems Strategic Priorities Fund.

Background

Terrestrial farming is the greatest driver of biodiversity loss, a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and water pollution, and faces its most transformational reform in 50 years to improve both environmental and economic sustainability. The new Agriculture Act, 25YEP, has commitment to net zero carbon emissions and policies to enhance environmental stewardship, sustainability and support the production of public goods. This project aims to demonstrate the socio-economic benefit of a world-leading ‘terrestrial blue economy’, contributing multiple public goods to reform UK agriculture.

Combining high value king prawn aquaculture with farm-based renewable energy will provide a novel home-grown output with considerable but poorly understood economic and health potential. The public goods benefits of a switch from beef/sheep production to prawn include lower greenhouse gas emissions, water pollution, and land use, freeing land for other public goods such as trees, biodiversity, biodiversity net gain, and recreation. Furthermore, co-locating self-contained, indoor prawn production units with UK farm anaerobic digesters (AD) will maximise use of their (otherwise wasted) heat energy, enhancing sustainability and circularity of both industries. Extra income will also boost the farm-based renewable energy sector, helping the UK meet emissions targets.

Prawn is a healthy seafood with high protein, low calories, rich in vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, promoting brain and heart health. Warm water king prawn is already highly popular seafood in the UK, with 22,852 tons (UK retail £319M) imported annually from Central America and SE Asia. However, traditional overseas production is vulnerable to climate/disease crises, has high transport-related CO2 emissions, and often uses environmentally unsustainable practices, e.g., destroying up to 80 % of nations’ mangrove forests which absorb and trap more CO2 than any other of Earth’s ecosystems. Mangroves also provide coastal protection against storms and coastal erosion. There is also the problem of illegal use (or just misuse) of chemicals such as pesticides and antibiotics resulting in contaminant residues in some of the prawn exported to the UK, EU and US that can cause health issues.

This project aims to completely avoid these problems and ensure a risk-free, healthier and sustainable supply chain of this heart- and brain- healthy seafood for UK-consumers, by facilitating a major expansion of UK’s king prawn RAS production sector which currently supplies equivalent to <1% of imports. We aim to co-locate RAS production with renewable energy sources on UK terrestrial farms. We conservatively estimate that if only 20% of the UK’s current Anaerobic Digestor (AD) plants were adapted for king prawn farming, we could sustain 960 prawn production units and harvest 5,520 tonnes of prawn per year (~25 % of current UK warm water prawn imports). With the rapid growth of AD plants across UK farms (10-fold increase since 2010), there is clear potential for truly sustainable, healthier, home-grown king prawn to provide the majority consumed in the near future, in addition to enhancing environmental stewardship, sustainability and supporting the production of public goods from UK agricultural practices. Importantly, this project will generate data to evaluate the true potential of sustainable UK king prawn production using renewable energy technology, as well as providing this industry with the necessary world-class scientific support.

Aims and Objectives

The Aims and Objectives align with the 4 interconnected Work Packages (WP) as follows:

• WP1 – To assess the economic viability of terrestrial king prawn production in the UK and to quantify and economically value the public goods generated by this transformation.
• WP2 – To maximise the efficiency of king prawn growth, health and nutritional quality in UK RAS facilities, via optimisation and automation of water chemistry management and prawn diets.
• WP3 – To field test (proof-of-principle) transportable king prawn RAS units co-localised with farm-based Anaerobic Digesters, and ensure utility, sustainability and circularity, of all inputs/outputs.
• WP4 – To develop and assess a business case and financial model for a king prawn UK hatchery (to avoid major inefficiencies and biosecurity problems associated with importing larvae).