An agro-industrial and food conglomerate headquartered in Thailand recently signed an agreement with Japan’s leading technology start-up for aquaculture, in a bid to improve the sustainability of Thailand’s shrimp farming industry.
The Chief Operating Officer of the Thai firm’s aquaculture business said that the deal was struck under the Thai-Japanese Open Innovation Columbus Project, an initiative aimed to match Japanese start-ups with Thai business organisations.
Bilateral cooperation is expected to drive digital innovation and advance technological development, which will push Thailand’s industries to the next level.
The Japanese tech firm’s advanced technology will promote sustainability for the Thai company’s vannamei shrimp farming, raise productivity and ensure high-quality output as well as safety in line with international standards and global environmental concerns.
It was noted that the tech start-up will leverage its expertise in space technology, internet of things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in enhancing shrimp farming capabilities. The result will also address a global issue on natural resource and environmental sustainability.
The Co-Founder and Managing Director of the Japanese tech start-up added that the company will help Thailand develop a shrimp farming system sustainably raise the Thai firm’s shrimp farming capability and production efficiency while reducing environmental impacts.
The start-up will start exploring the agro-industrial company’s closed farming system in Bang Sakao Farm, in Chanthaburi province.
Data will be integrated with space technology, IoT and AI, to create a sustainable shrimp farming prototype which will then be shared with Thai farmers.
Green Tech in Thailand Needs a Push
- Environmental advocates are urging the government to promote collaboration between the public and private sectors on the development of sustainable, “green technology” in Thailand.
- The head of Chiang Mai University’s Climate Change Data Centre stated that while the public and private sectors do work together to develop green technology, the results of such collaborations are rarely made available to the public.
- When Bangkok was choking from the most recent haze, many inventors came up with various innovations that were created to mitigate the harmful impact of the PM2.5 dust particles on human health.
- Some inventors develop and sell their products commercially, while others offer their inventions and innovations to the state. While the government has acted as a consumer, it hasn’t acted as a development partner, simply because existing attitudes and regulations do not favour these ‘green innovators’.
- The government has been urged to set up a specific unit to oversee and further propel the development of green innovation for the benefit of the general public.
- The State Secretary for the Swedish Minister for Foreign Trade also urged the government to get behind inter-sectoral collaboration to develop green technology deal with Bangkok’s haze problem.
- He noted that Swedish automotive companies, for instance, have been working alongside the government in a lot of different ways to reduce their footprint and achieve their sustainability goals.
- In turn, the government makes sure that their products — whether it is electric or bio-gas fuelled vehicles — are available in the market.
- Hence, the implications of the new deal between the recent deal between the agro-industrial and food conglomerate and the Japanese technology start-up for aquaculture are eagerly awaited.