As a business owner of an aquaculture company, how can you take the first step to be profitable and sustainable at the same time? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episodes. Hello, and welcome to the Business of Aquaculture podcast. This is the podcast for the Sustainable Business movement in the Aqua farming and ocean ranching industries. This podcast aims to amplify the voices of entrepreneurs addressing the United Nation global goals, aka Sustainable Development Goals Number 14, to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and the seas, listening to fellow business aquaculturists in their journey in this new model of food production, of making their business sustainable, and help the oceans ecology, while also making a profit all at the same time. Get inspired to learn how even small to medium businesses can make an impact, save the seas, leave a legacy and have a better quality of life. One of our goals is to take away a nugget of wisdom that will help your business move from the industrial revolution to business 5.0. Our vision is that a collaboration in the aquaculture industry. I’m Lourdes Gant, your host.
Lourdes Gant 1:25
As an agriculture expert, how do you tackle the balance in advising business owners of being profitable and sustainable at the same time? That’s what we’re going to be talking about in this episode. Welcome to Episode Two of The Business Of Aquaculture. This episode we have Mr. Tom Broadley of IEC corporate dot ca. Mr. Broadley is a marine biologist by training he graduated from the University of Victoria in 1987. After three years as head biologist at the provinces largest oyster producer, and a farter to in the position of Director of shellfish for a private research company. He became a co owner and CEO of IEC International. This episode is for you if you’re an owner or an expert in an aquaculture company who wants to hear from someone with a marine research and development expertise. You will gain insights about environmental project and business development and management technology development and utilization, food and seafood processing, marketing and value added product development, Fisheries and Aquaculture facilitation, technology, policy, market development, monitoring and education and training.
Lourdes Gant 2:38
So listen in and I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you listened to our first episode, I interviewed Mr. Eric Gant of manatee Holdings Limited. He’s one of the pioneers in the Google Doc aquaculture industry in Canada, you will gain insights on how often in business, wisdom comes from good judgment. good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgment. So if you’re in the brink of having to make a wise decision you’re experiencing in your business or existing projects at the moment, you will learn a lot from this premier interview. So welcome, Tom, thanks for being here.
Tom Broadley 3:13
Thank you for having me.
Lourdes Gant 3:14
This will be like just conversation just for everyone’s information. Tom is one of our family friends. And he also work with us. So maybe you can give us a background on how did you get started in the business of aquaculture. I really don’t know this story as well. So this will be a treat.
Tom Broadley 3:31
I’m originally from Kitchener, Ontario, and then I moved out west to go to University of Victoria entered into marine biology. Fortunately, the third year of my degree, they introduced a work Co Op program. This is where you work for four months, and you go to school for four months. And it gives you a real variety of what you could be doing with your education. I was fortunate enough to get a job with redonda see farms that are up on West. We’re up on West redonda Island. And I had to do for work terms. And over the next three years I did all four word terms with redundancy farms where I became their head marine biologist. And then the day I graduated redundant, turned around and said we want to hire you full time. So I’d say initiated in this in that position. I was responsible for all the seed procurement for their oysters and clam program.
Lourdes Gant 4:27
Wow. And did you fell in love with oyster just like Eric fell in love with the ocean?
Tom Broadley 4:33
Yeah, Yes, I did. You have to realize that from Ontario, I’ve never seen a live oyster. I shucked my first live oyster and I fell in love with them since then thats all I do.
Lourdes Gant 4:44
This is like 30 years ago now. Right? So maybe tell us a little bit more about your journey after that stint.
Tom Broadley 4:50
I was fairly young at that age, probably around 24, 25 I had to live on Cortez Island, and it’s a fairly remote isolated little island. So I was missing life basically. So I got a job opportunity with Aqua Metrics. They wanted to hire me, their private research company. I handle their shellfish department moved down to Victoria and I ran their shellfish department. While within three years, a good partner of mine, Warren Clayton contacted me and said, Hey, why don’t we join forces together and establish IEC? I always young, foolish, and I said, Sure. So if we started IEC approximately 32 years ago, the first year, I wouldn’t say we made a million dollars, but we’d say we’ve made much money. But we survived. But quickly, over the next 31 years, learn and I have done over 700 projects, encompassing 12 different continents we’ve had to go through. So there’s not many species we haven’t played with in the ocean.
Lourdes Gant 5:58
Yeah, I think it’s always exciting just for the purpose of the audience. Just so you know, when when I first met Tom, I always thought out every time I have a meeting with him, I learned a thing or two about shellfish and I’m very much a baby in this industry. I’ve been in it for only 13 years. And I would say, I am still learning a lot. So when you incorporate it, I guess and became active in IEC. I remember Eric mentioning about you guys do a lot of things International. And you mentioned seven continents, maybe you can share what’s your favorite and what what’s the project about.
Tom Broadley 6:33
My favorite one was sefa, Canadian industry food Association got money to build a shellfish factory in Brazil. So I was contacted by University in Brazil, can we hire you to come down and design and implement a shellfish program for us? So I was thrilled to death. So I had to go, my first wedding anniversary and my second wedding anniversary, I was in Brazil, building a hot tree. other continents I’ve been to I’ve been to China several times, because China is a real go getter in terms of aquaculture. They don’t wait for anything. They’re just moving forward. My other partner, he has been to, that’s Lauren has been to other variety of continents, Europe, Africa, you name it. Anybody who is exploring aquaculture likes to contact us so that we can give them our background and maybe some potential good advice of where they should go.
Lourdes Gant 7:31
Do you have a favorite species.
Tom Broadley 7:33
My favorite species is well, Eric, I ran Eric’s geoduck program for for a long time. But my favorite species is still Pacific oyster. Because last year guy guess, right?
Lourdes Gant 7:48
Alright, so moving on. What have you seen about the pros and cons being in this industry,
Tom Broadley 7:54
the use of Pacific history. That’s the best example the best history hub, Pacific oyster was brought in to BC in 1911. So that’s how long they’ve been trying to cultivate the Pacific oyster here. Well, from 1911 to about mid 90s. We called it a mom and pop operation. So the people who are growing oysters lived in these remote communities, and we’re looking for meaningful employment and income. So that was the initiation of shellfish aquaculture in BC. Unfortunately, it just stayed at that flat plateau. The only markets they really could access was Vancouver. So prices just fluctuated wildly. Then all of a sudden, they decided no, we have to diversify. So we’re not selling to processors anymore. We’re going to process our own product. Well, that was the initiation of opening the door for so now, once you had federal approval, through a shellfish processing plant, they could market product around the world. So we have developed markets extensively through Europe, Asia, we even go as far as South America with our product now. So that was a real boost to this industry. So we stayed with Pacific oysters, then we got into Manila clams. Then all of a sudden, we looked at why are we doing exotic species as they’re called, because they’re not native to British Columbia. So that’s when we started trying to look into indigenous species. That claim is your classic example. We had to go through fighting with regulatory agencies for about five years before we got limited approval. And the limited approval was we had to prove tactically, we could do it, and we had to prove fiscally we would be viable. Well, that experiment still going on.
Tom Broadley 7:57
That’s 20 years now that experiments been going on? Yes, everybody who wants to get into gooey culture but the biggest problem with gooey cago culture, you must Have patience. It’s a long process to go through Pacific Oysters, Manila clams, two years, three years, gooey ducks. Like I’d like to say less than 10 years, but optimistically, I would keep it around 10 years. So it’s 10 years of a lot of funding going into something, you’re not going to see a return on your investment and ROI, probably year 15, 16. So not a lot of investors have pockets that accepts, but they’re gonna have to get into it. Because the population, low population of geoducks is declining at such a rapid rate, the fishery is going to collapse. And the market demand just keeps escalating. So there’s an example where our industry is right now as we’re trying to develop the technologies for viable aquaculture and all indigenous species now.
Lourdes Gant 10:58
I like what you mentioned about the challenges in terms of regulatory agencies, I was interviewing one of the best wineries here in the island, and I didn’t realize that they were going through the same challenge. Interestingly, they are not able to actually sell their wine to other provinces. And ironically, the people who live in Montreal cannot get Vancouver Island wines. Well, in fact, they can order online in Argentina. So there’s this precipice that’s going to happen just because bureaucracy is not able to catch up.
Tom Broadley 11:33
Unfortunately, our regulatory agencies Department of Fisheries and Oceans, they have two mandates, which are across purposes. One is health and habitat of the wild fishery. The second is promotion of aquaculture. The to sound like they should go hand in hand, unfortunately, they don’t. Those existing wild fishery do not like aquaculture. And unfortunately, that is dictated a lot of the regulatories actions in the impediment of our industry.
Lourdes Gant 12:05
Yeah, that’s sad. But as you mentioned, the wild fishery is collapsing at a very sad phase, and aquaculture is gonna fill into the vacuum. So my last question for you is, what do you think the industry is in store for the next I was gonna ask 10 years, but maybe just three years, maybe give us the top three trends that you’re seeing in the aquaculture industry?
Tom Broadley 12:33
Okay, I’ll do the first question. What do you think the industry is in store for the next 10 years? I see a large diversification. Right now they’re predicting, they’re actually expecting one and two pieces of seafood to be derived of some form of Aqua culture. I think that’s almost going to go one to one here in the next few years. Unfortunately, yoke around the world, most of our wild fishery industries are collapsing, because we’ve over fished unfortunately. So you’re gonna see a large developments in diversification. China’s your classic example. They’re probably cultivating close to 40 species right now, that answers that one. And so the next 10 years is going to be explosive growth. And hopefully, Canada can join that if the regulatory agencies see the light.
Tom Broadley 13:22
One of the top three trends are you seeing, I’m not only seeing the diversification and species, I’m seeing the diversification in location. The largest oyster going or all this Taylor united, they’ve just come into BC and bought up large sections of plants and 10 years because they want to diversify in their location. That’s one impediment to aquaculture. If you grow all your crop in one geographical region, if that area becomes susceptible to unnatural contamination, like PSP, there’s not much you can do. So you’re gonna see that’s the second trend, you’re gonna see companies diversifying around the world. And the third top trend I would see is the mom and pop industry has faded completely. And you’re gonna see larger and larger companies coming in to expand upon the beauty of British Columbia for aquaculture. So those are my top three or decile play those answered those questions for you.
Lourdes Gant 14:28
Thank you very much. Yes, they do. And like what I said, I always learn something every time I talk to you, so thank you so much for your time.
Tom Broadley 14:36
No problem.
Lourdes Gant 14:38
My biggest takeaway from this episode is just imagining in terms of diversification of what you said, both in location and it’s the specie. I think that comes across the board in any industry so that you can distribute your risk business wise. And for the next episode, we’ll have Bill Collins of Cascadia Seaweed who will be talking about how he was able To attract investors in this company and build long term relationships that sustain their business, but before I let you go, Tom, maybe you can give our audience how they can get in touch with you.
Tom Broadley 15:10
Yeah, I can be reached that best probably is my website. If you go on there, we have our own website IEC. Corporate. So my email is Broadly at IEC corporate.com. And I have no problem answering any questions anybody may have.
Lourdes Gant 15:29
Sounds good. Well, thank you so much for your time. And I know it’s Easter today and you’re working with me.
Lourdes Gant 15:35
Not a problem, not a problem. Thanks. Bye. Bye.
Lourdes Gant 15:44
Thank you for listening, and I hope you are inspired from this episode. Do take a moment and share this with your friends and colleagues and rate and review the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I’d love to know what your biggest takeaway from this conversation has been? What are you going to do differently? Please share thoughts across social media and tag us for links and Show Notes for this episode, visit our website, www duck sustainable aquaculture.ca slash podcast. Thank you again. I hope you will join me on the next episode and together we can help create a better business in aquaculture
