Is Poor Tank Design Crippling Your Business?

Some years ago, I was visiting a lobster-buying facility that checked all the boxes one would want in a facility. It had lots of clean, cold seawater from wells, access to lobster year-round, and only ten minutes to a town of 15,000 for a ready pool of labour. 

By my measurements, there was enough tank space to purge and hold 500,000 lbs of lobster. But management insisted they could only hold 250,000lbs of lobster at any given time. Why the discrepancy? Bad experiences had taught them that putting two layers of crates in the tank led to lobster mortality. Having invented, designed, built, and retrofitted numerous tanks, I could tell the issue was a lack of oxygen (90%+ of conventional tanks in the industry have this issue, causing chronic 2-3% mortality, yet being ignored). 

Management was convinced that there was no fix for this. When presented with the solution, they were in denial and asked for a price on an oxygen monitoring system to determine that the oxygen was low. Once presented with the solution (APS oxygenation system), their in-house technician flat out said, "Your approach will not work."  

Fast-forward through years of inaction on this simple and obvious problem, and the owner sold the facility to another operator. I can't say for sure why they sold, but if you have the staff, the building, and the electric bill for 500,000 lbs of lobster but limit yourself to 250,000 lbs... the bottom line can't be all that good. Thankfully, the new owners were already our customers and have begun the retrofit process to increase the water treatment system capacity to match the tank capacity.

Names are withheld here as we have a policy of not sharing without expressly given permission - but the names are not important. What is poor tank design doing to your bottom line? Do you avoid filling your tanks 100% in the summer because you can't trust the system to hold the temperature cold enough? Or, because a chronic loss of 2-10% is brushed off due to 'junk lobster' or 'it's a warm summer' or some other industry cliche that helps save face but keeps businesses in a downward spiral. Call APS at 902-396-2829 or visit our website, www.aquaproduction.ca, to discuss how to get your tanks fueling your business success privately.