A consortium of mainly state-owned Chinese firms have signed a framework agreement to build three “super fish farms” as part of a CNY 6 billion ($954.9 million) offshore development in the South China Sea.

On Saturday, officials from Hainan provincial government and China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) attended a signing ceremony for a “modern deep-sea intelligent oceans and fisheries project” off the coast of the island province, according to a report published on the government's website.

According to the report, the project involves construction of three “deepwater oceanic aquaculture platforms”, or “super fish farms”, each larger than any fish pen currently in the world.

Each platform will be 120 meters in diameter at the surface, equivalent to the length of a football pitch. The platforms will be 75m high, equivalent to a 22-story building, and hold 250,000 cubic meters of water.

Each platform will farm up to 6,000 metric tons of fish.

The report said the platforms will use “remote control technology and automation” where possible, including in feed delivery, fish monitoring, and for removing dead fish. In the event of a storm, operators will be able to remotely submerge the platforms underwater.

The project, which is planned for Lingshui county in the island’s southeast, is backed by a consortium of firms including Wuchuan Shipbuilding Industry Group, a subsidiary of CSIC, one of China's largest state-owned ship builders, and the Bank of China, the report states. 

Other members of the consortium include Hainan Ocean Development, a provincial government-backed state-owned enterprise, Beida Jade Bird, a firm set up by Beijing University, and Lingao Haifeng, a Hainan-based cage-pen fish farming and fishing company.

“The project will help transform marine fisheries in our province and promote intelligent deep-sea cages. The economic value to the local economy could be up to CNY 20bn, and create over 10,000 jobs across the whole supply chain,” said the report, adding: "The project is of great significance to Hainan’s marine economy." 

Hainan, a tropical island located in the South China Sea, is mainly known in the seafood industry for its land-based tilapia aquaculture. The super fish farms could be a copy of Ocean Farm 1, a fish pen designed and built for Norwegian salmon firm SalMar. SalMar had Ocean Farm 1 built in a Chinese shipyard in Qingdao last year by Qingdao Wuchuan, taking delivery of Ocean Farm 1 in Norway last summer.

“I believe it’s Wuchuan Shipyard's (Qingdao) copy of the SalMar unit that they’re trying to ‘sell’ to a farmer in Hainan,” an industry source in China told us.

Although the report states the consortium had signed off buying equipment for the project, the source reckons financing has not been agreed. “It’s a project that has been signed but is still subject to a number of conditions to do with finances,” he said.

'Blue grain stores'

There is growing interest among China's government and Chinese companies in mariculture. Last summer, a consortium of Fujian-based firms and De Maas SMC agreed a CNY 1bn deepwater project for Fujian. 

De Maas -- A Qingdao-based firm established by two Dutchmen providing services for the offshore oil and gas services industry -- will design and build five SSFF150 pens (Semi-submersible Spar Fish Farm) each 139m in diameter and 12m high. 

Meanwhile, in November, China’s ministry of agriculture announced a ‘national mariculture demonstration zone construction plan (2017-2025)’, which targets 178 pilot mariculture farms to be built in China by 2025. 

“Resource depletion and environmental degredation have already become bottlenecks for fisheries development. Pushing development of ‘blue grain stores’ will help to satisfy the need to improve structure of urban and rural food supply, including the need to supply high quality proteins,” said a ministry announcement in relation to the plan.