From agricultural waste to sustainable seafood

Aquaculture is expanding rapidly due to declining ocean stocks and dietary shifts towards healthier options, but faces challenges in securing sustainable aqua feed. Meanwhile, agricultural waste continues to accumulate or end up in landfills, an opportunity Kidemis seized to create sustainable feedstock.

Founded in 2023 Constantin Marakhov (CEO), Sean Wassermann (CSO/CTO), and John Ericsson (finance and strategy), Kidemis has developed a proprietary fermentation technology that allows to convert side streams into affordable, SDG-compliant, and high-quality nutrition for farmed seafood. Their plant-based ingredient aims to replace fish biomass, also known as fishmeal, in current feed formulations for aqua farming.

As the global market size of aqua feed is already approaching CHF 80 billion per year and is expected to grow further, the need to replace fishmeal is becoming critical. The urgency is driven by the contraction of ocean biomass and the increasing demand by global aqua feed players – also Kidemis’ target customers.

Upon winning the third stage of Venture Kick, the company has received CHF 150’000 to further advance their bioprocessing and engineering solutions for mycoprotein technology in collaboration with BFH/HAFL, where the team currently conducts intensive live fish trials focused on product fine-tuning and productivity enhancement.

“Dealing with Venture Kick was an ultimate pleasure. The whole ecosystem is topped up with coaching and networking. During the three stages, we learned a lot, and it helped us to sharpen our business model and market positioning,” highlighted Constantin Marakhov.

(Press release/RAN)
Photo: Kidemis’ team: CEO Constantin Marakhov, CSO/CTO Sean Wassermann, and Finance-Strategy Advisor John Ericsson