How to Request Aquaculture Supplier Quotes
A quote request is only useful if several suppliers can price the same thing. In aquaculture that means the request must carry biological assumptions as well as an equipment list, because capacity claims mean nothing without species, biomass and water conditions. The full structure is in the aquaculture RFQ guide.
What every aquaculture RFQ must contain
Species, harvest size and annual production target; system type and phasing; country and site status; water source, temperature and quality; power and backup expectation; budget range; timeline; and permit status. Missing data is the most common reason suppliers cannot quote at all.
State scope boundaries explicitly
What civil work does the owner deliver, what does the supplier deliver, and who is responsible for installation, commissioning and training? Ambiguity here becomes change orders later.
Give a budget range
It is not a negotiating weakness — it is what keeps proposals realistic and stops suppliers designing to a price the project was never going to spend. Set the range with the commercial CAPEX calculator and sanity-check returns with the project ROI calculator.
Check internal coherence before sending
Is the production target consistent with available water and power, and are oxygen, filtration and backup capacity coherent with peak biomass? Run the oxygen demand, filtration and power requirement calculators first. Incoherent briefs return incomparable quotes.
Normalise the responses
Same species, same biomass, same temperature, explicit inclusions and exclusions, comparable incoterms, warranty and spare parts terms in the project country. For reuse systems the RAS bid normalizer puts competing offers on one basis; the criteria are set out in the supplier comparison guide.
FishMatch Group reviews the brief before any supplier is approached, then structures the responses so they can be compared. FishMatch is not a manufacturer, EPC contractor or lender, and supplier availability and pricing are never guaranteed. Begin at RFQ intake or read the project guide first.
Frequently asked questions
Guides, calculators and country pages for this topic
Use the guides for the decision framework, the calculators for indicative numbers, and the country pages for local scope and cost context. FishMatch reviews every request by hand before any supplier is approached — directory and country pages are for research, not automatic matching.
Guides
Calculators
Aquaculture planning benchmarks
| Figure | Value | Context |
|---|---|---|
| CAPEX — RAS | USD 9,000–14,000 per tonne/yr | Global baseline before country cost factor. |
| CAPEX — Ponds | USD 1,800–4,000 per tonne/yr | Lined or earthen ponds, excluding land. |
| CAPEX — Cages | USD 2,500–5,500 per tonne/yr | Cages, moorings, nets and service equipment. |
| CAPEX — Flow-through | USD 4,000–7,000 per tonne/yr | Raceways and water intake works. |
| Energy use | RAS ~6 kWh/kg; ponds ~1.2; flow-through ~1.5; cages ~0.3 | Per kg of fish produced. |
| Typical FCR | Trout 1.1; salmon 1.2; shrimp 1.4; tilapia 1.6; carp 1.8 | kg feed per kg growth; varies with feed and management. |
| Farm size where FishMatch reviews projects | From ~USD 250,000 total project value | Commercial fish and shrimp projects. |
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Where this fits in a real project
Every FishMatch project runs through the same five reviewed stages, from a first enquiry to comparable quotations. See the full buyer journey.
Planning a commercial aquaculture project?
Send your project brief. A FishMatch specialist reviews it before relevant suppliers are contacted privately.
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