14/12/2025
After 13 years, we have closed Integrated Aquaculture in Hekpoort.
We set out to prove that you could grow Tilapia fish and vegetables together, using fish waste to grow food—creating a net-zero waste system.
We built markets in both formal and informal sectors, Trained people in skills that didn’t exist locally, developed intensive fish and aquaponic systems, built processing capacity (fresh fish, smoked fish, fish cakes) and navigated years of licensing, environmental approvals and red tape.
The system worked.
The fish grew.
The vegetables grew.
The demand existed.
We even completed a successful trial supplying fish cakes to prisons.
What we couldn’t survive were things outside our control:
Three major electricity price increases;
Load shedding, which forced extra delivery days and higher costs;
State procurement systems that couldn’t support new providers — even when everything was in place;
A long runway requiring capital and time.
What we achieved was not a “failed business” — it was a completed pilot of a new agricultural vertical.
The failure point was not biology, engineering, or economics, it was a political environment with no understanding of economic development.
Pioneers don’t fail — they simply arrive before the system is ready.
