Peniche, Portugal, Oct. 10, 2025 (Lusa) - SEAentia has launched a tender worth €10 million for the construction of a pavilion to install an industrial croaker aquaculture unit in Peniche, in the district of Leiria.

The contract to build an industrial pavilion for the installation and operation of a recirculating croakers production system will cost €9.9 million, plus VAT, and will take two years to complete, according to the notice published in Diário da República.

SEAentia, founded by Portuguese researchers, is the first company in the world to start recirculating croaker aquaculture for commercial purposes from Peniche.

In March of this year, the company, which has been based in Cantanhede since 2017 and has had its pilot project installed in the Port of Peniche since 2020, matured its research and secured funding to "move forward with the first commercial scale of the project".

"We are working with our partners to develop the project in the Fishing Port of Peniche on a commercial scale," João Rito, one of the directors, told Lusa.

The company is investing €16 million in a new 8,750-square-metre building and in the research and development of the product, financed by the EU's Mar 2030 programme (€12.5 million) and the private fund Indico Capital Partners (€3.5 million).

When it starts producing croakers, the start-up expects to produce 700 tonnes a year.

"It will take us a year and a half to reach a commercial size of 2.5 kilograms, so we estimate around 3.5 to 4 years to have the fish on the market," said the University of Coimbra researcher.

In the commercial phase of the project, the number of jobs is expected to increase from six to 28, all of them qualified.

Initially, the company intends to export 60% to 80% of its production to the Dutch market to achieve the best prices and financial sustainability.

It then intends to replicate the commercial production unit in other locations in the country or abroad for sustainability rather than focusing on exports.

In Peniche, it has had its pilot project in place since 2020, which has enabled testing the research carried out since 2017, analysing the product, and proving to potential investors that the scientific project can become a sustainable business.

Its founders are committed to recirculating aquaculture, a technology in which they specialise and which is already used around the world to grow other species of fish, such as salmon, sea bass and sea bream.

In a pavilion on land, the aquaculture tanks are supplied with filtered seawater, and the entire environment is controlled, including the salinity, temperature, and pH of the water.

The fish are grown on a dry diet formulated from different sustainable sources, without the use of hormones or chemicals, perfected by their researchers.

"The technology allows us to ensure animal welfare, so the fish grow faster and healthier, have less mortality, and in the end, the product we're going to consume has much better quality in terms of nutritional value," the researcher explained to justify the choice.

Under these conditions, "it's a product with far fewer contaminants and far better nutritional value than the same species produced in other types of systems or caught at sea", said the researcher, for whom aquaculture is in the future the "only possibility of producing fish to feed the world's population".

In the commercial phase, the start-up aims to implement product traceability to inform consumers about the entire production and slaughter processes and to achieve certification.

Croaker was chosen because it is a "species that is not flooded on the market", it has a higher nutritional and market value than other fish, there is EU funding for differentiated aquaculture projects, and there have already been studies by the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute (IPMA) into the biology and aquaculture behaviour of this species.

SEAentia is one of the first companies in the Peniche Sea Science and Technology Park, whose sea economy incubator is also under construction within the port.

For João Rito, "Peniche is one of the biggest clusters in the fish industry and, being in Peniche, they can easily sell and distribute the product, which greatly reduces the risk of the project".

FCC/ADB // ADB.

Lusa