"Us versus Them"

Ending the week and the month on a very positive business note. 


The new shading system has been installed in the greenhouse over the ponds and appears to be very effective in maintaining consistent pond temperatures.

The bio-floc (notice the green color, this is good) in the ponds appears very healthy and ready for stocking which should occur in early August.

The agreements for funding the initial phase of our expansion have been signed and we anticipate funding for expansion to begin to hit our accounts starting next week. 


We are currently interviewing for two new positions to begin wok for us in early August.


Next week we will begin interviewing engineering firms to choose the engineering group that will (hopefully) become our long term partner to design and work with us as we expand our production.


Finally, we start our search for a permanent site for our a full production farm next week.


And in a very important development over the past month as we were putting together the funding package that would provide us with the capital needed to pay for the expansion, we were questioned in great detail about several boutique operations each to some degree appearing to be similar to our highly proprietary system.


After a great deal of research our team of experts came up with the not surprising but nonetheless comforting conclusion, simply put, "It ain't so". 


Not one system out there is even remotely capable at any level of performing like what we have. Take a look at a excerpt from our internal investigation report. Names of specific boutique operations have been redacted to avoid disclosing any specific operations.

"Our approach is a large-scale commercial system that is conceived and designed to provide economically significant quantities (millions of pounds) at a premium price due to its large size, controlled rearing, and perfect condition.   We are quite certain that this approach is valid because we have piloted and prototyped the entire process.  

Part of our concept originates from ten years of federally funded research specifically targeted at closed and re-circulating aquaculture systems at six different USA universities .   One immediate thing that distinguishes us from al of that research and today's boutique aquaculture system's approach is a partitioned treatment system such as we employ. 

The important thing here is that GBT, Inc., has gone far (years) beyond the research in the 90's by creating a physical system that is a complete solution to the management of very large commercial systems.    

WE HAVE RATIONALIZED AND SCALED UP the zero discharge technology to a very significant commercial scale.   

We have also developed very robust treatment systems by selection of very specific bacteria for water treatment and we have a unique waste solids concentration and treatment capacity integrated into the system.

Boutique closed systems that have popped up in Nevada, Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and other places) appear to be barley beyond a pilot-demonstration stage of development with boutique marketing objectives. Their system energy losses in the majority of  climates where they are located are very high and that its costs them a lot of money to heat water.  

Each of these small boutique closed systems growing shrimp are trying to supply small local markets. We are very familiar with each of them.

They do not possess the integration of the biological, genetics, and mechanical systems that we possess.

Our genetics alone, has cost us several million USD of development and taken 5 years to perfect. These small scale operations that employ some of the aspects of our system have no access to our genetic line which enables us to grow our shrimp at a rate 3 times faster then any other system in the world.

Our approach, taught by pain in South Africa, is to find a semi-tropical or tropical location to implement a large-scale commercial system that virtually eliminates heating costs with passive temperature control engineering. 

GBT’s project and system is unique when you consider the pricing, quality and sizing of the shrimp sold by this company.

1.) The US market is primarily a heads off market and typically heads on product is sold to ethnic restaurants that deal with strictly ethnic customers such as Spanish, Greek, Italian and French.  Although that ethnic mix may sound like a lot of mixed culture Americans, the real problem is that these are Americans whose palates have become accustomed to firm shrimp processed head off and not heads on where softness between carapace and tail can develop, leading to a very unsatisfactory taste and mouth feel.

2.) Size is another issue to quantify.  The 21-25 ct. shrimp they promote on the various web sites at $8.00 per pound are in reality a finished count head off of 34, when a 23 ct. head on size is used.  A 34 ct. shrimp of good quality, farm raised, is valued at $3.00 a pound.  Thus, the $8.00 a pound shrimp at true value with heads removed would give you a per pound price of $11.94.  In other words the customer gets shrimp, which by the time eaten is probably not the best compared to a fresh frozen tail, but in real terms he theoretically pays almost 4 times the market sheet value because with the head off, which the customer won’t eat, he really getting 67% of the volume he paid for.  By the way, a 20-30 ct heads on shrimp of good quality has a market price of approximately $3.50 a pound.

It’s important to understand that there is a market for fresh (in limited quantities in the US) heads on; but a much larger market for a heads off product.  However, the usage of fresh is limited to small users or by retail outlets that have a small market area to promote the product.  When the economics of investment to return are looked at, the fact is that small fresh operations are limiting to our buyers, distributors and wholesalers whose customers use quantities of shrimp in the millions of pounds not tens of thousands. The only way to supply these volumes is through our proprietary system.

A Red Lobster will use over 50 million pounds of shrimp a year, a large distributor like SYSCO over 150 million pounds, plus, a year and major wholesaler over 60 million pounds a year. 

All of this product is frozen because most seafood restaurants and retailers prefer frozen in order to take advantage of buying opportunities and storage for volume buys.  Fresh does not typically fit into the scenario.

Although retailers show product that looks fresh, that product is usually thawed overnight and put into the seafood case the next morning.  In other words, fresh heads on shrimp are limiting and can become a quality concern from taste to appearance, unless, they are sold immediately from the seafood case.  That very seldom happens.

When you put it in financial terms, our system, can and will do volumes, process to customers desired market form, give that customer just in time inventories, show value added revenues, meet government and international ISO and HACCP standards, using our state of art science. 

To our knowledge there is not an operation in the world nor in current research that combines all of the variable aspects of our system. Indeed, given the current state of the industry it would take any competitor, even with money and expertise a minimum of ten years to 15 years to develop a system capable of producing what we can do today."