How a 49-year-old Pune co-supports global salmon farming
Image used for representative purpose only
PUNE: What started as a joint venture between Garware Wall Ropes led by the late industrialist Abasaheb Garware and a US based Wall Industries in 1976,
Garware Technical Fibres
, in its new avatar has transformed into a leading supplier of
advanced fishing cages
for global oceanic salmon breeding.
In the early days and even after the Garware family acquired the entire control Wall Industries, the company used to export nylon fibres as commodity and value-added products were not being developed as it was manufacturing oriented rather than innovation led organisation. This changed in around 2010 when the company made some internal changes making it a research focused entity.
"We studied some of the products in fishing business that were exported to the American continent.
We did a lot of deep interviews with the fishing companies and realised that we were giving them the wrong feature. They wanted durability and as opposed to that the company was giving strength. We and we changed the product completely and their response was so good," third generation entrepreneur and CMD of Garware Technical Fibres, Vayu Garware said.
The demand for fish, mainly salmon, is huge in international markets but availability of naturally bred fish population in the oceans is flat if not decreasing.
To address this issue, fishing companies deploy huge fishing cages in the oceans made from advanced synthetic fibre to create a fish farm which are sent to market after harvest.
There is a continuous need to improvise the features of these fishing cages, which can go up to 200 metres in diameter and 60 metres deep in the water. These cages attract predators like sharks around Australia or sea lions found near Chile, Scotland and Canada.
The predators push the cages in order to reach to the salmon and to prevent that the requirement was to make it more durable against the pushing. Many times, the sharks or sea lions push against the cages not to break them but to suck the water along with the salmon from within.
"So, we developed new cages by inserting steel to resist the pushing from the predators. This reduced the losses of fishing companies from 6-7% to almost zero.
A 6-7% loss of fish from the batch translates to millions of dollars to the fishing companies. But this was one of our earlier products and we have kept innovating since then," Garware said. Another problem is that algae and barnacles get deposited on the cages which stifle the growth of fishes as excessive growth of deposits reduces the oxygen supply.
The fishing companies had to deploy large automated machines to clean the cages which again increased the costs.
The practice was to paint the fibres with a coating but later on stopped as it was not environmentally friendly.
Garware said that the company developed recyclable polymer which was also embedded in the twines of the ropes so that the roots of algae and barnacles cannot entrench themselves on the ropes. Among the more recent additions, the company has used internet-of-things (IoT) and sensors in the ropes of the cages so that any damage or stress on the cages is relayed to the fishing companies so that they can send someone for repairs.
These innovations came after putting significant resources including time.
For example, we actually studied the sea lions underwater with cameras and teams of scientists, he said. The company is on the path of continuous innovation and to reduce share of raw exports from its sales. It is aiming that one third of its sales should come from newly developed products that are developed in the last three years.
This will keep all the functions of the company from research to marketing on their toes, Garware said.
Some of the other divisions of the company include geosynthetic business which includes rockfall protection.
There too, it is working on sensor based products which will be able to tell increased load of rocks and debris on the protective mesh so as to prevent accidents. The company earns around 35% of its sales from
aquaculture
business, 20% from food business, 15% from sports vertical and 15% from geosynthetic division.
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