Happy Shrimp
Happy Shrimp mixes waste heat from an electricity generation plant and its own careful and environmentally-aware farming systems to create a location perfect for farming tropical shrimp on the Netherlands coast.
Tropical Shrimp farming in Northern Europe
Shrimp for the Northern European market typically travels from Spain, Asia and/or South America. That uses a lot of energy for transport and keeping the shrimp frozen before they land on dinner plates. Happy Shrimp is a local business delivering to a local market. Their setup comprises a 5,000-square-meter greenhouse-enclosed shrimp farm divided into twenty-four tanks. Their production target is thirty tons of shrimp per year. The farm is located next to E.ON Benlux’s Maasvlakte’s power plant near Rotterdam. Using an exchange system, Happy Shrimp creates the heat it needs from waste heat previously released into the air.
“We looked at shrimp farming around the world and heard the horror stories about mangrove destruction, antibiotics, insecticides and pesticides. So I said we’re going to develop a ‘happy shrimp farm’, a closed-system, environmentally friendly shrimp farm.”
Because it’s a closed environment, Happy Shrimp has excellent disease control, and shrimp do not absorb open-water toxins such as mercury. This also means Happy Shrimp does not use antibiotics or growth hormones.
Happy Shrimp’s creators, Gilbert Curtessi and Sebastian Greiner, were industrial ecology researchers investigating sustainable energy systems. They talked with a refinery, a power plant, and an oil storage facility, all of whom wanted to do something eco-friendly with their waste heat. Finally, they settled on using waste heat for aquaculture, and the market size and diverse demand for shrimp appealed.
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