RFQ Best Practices for Aquaculture Buyers: Get Quotes You Can Actually Compare
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Most aquaculture RFQs fail before a supplier reads them. Not because the project is bad, but because the brief lets every supplier quote a different farm. One prices a 500-tonne RAS with a 40-micron drum filter; another assumes 60 micron and skips the degasser. The cheapest quote wins on paper and the project pays for the difference in change orders. These are the practices that prevent that.
1. Fix the duty conditions before you ask for a price
Every price is only valid against a duty: flow, head, temperature, TAN load, oxygen demand, feed per day. Write the numbers first — the project sizer and the calculator library exist for exactly this — and put them at the top of the RFQ. A supplier who quotes against your duty conditions can be compared; a supplier who quotes against their own assumptions cannot.
2. Tender one scope, not five conversations
The single most valuable sentence in any RFQ is the scope boundary: what the price must include, what is excluded, and where the civil works split sits. When every supplier prices the same boundary, the spread between quotes is real market information. When each defines their own, the spread is noise. The structured RFQ wizard forces this boundary before anything is sent.
3. Ask for guarantees, not brochures
A catalogue page is a capability claim. A guarantee is a contractual number: oxygen transfer efficiency at your water temperature, TAN removal at your peak feed load, drum filter throughput at your flow. Ask for guaranteed performance at your design conditions, and ask what happens contractually when the number is missed. Suppliers who build commercial systems answer this easily; the rest reveal themselves.
4. Demand energy and consumables in the quote
Purchase price is typically a third of the ten-year cost of aeration, pumping and filtration equipment. Require installed kW, expected running kW at design load, backwash volumes, lamp lives, media replacement intervals and spare parts pricing in the quote itself. Two quotes with identical capex can differ by six figures a year in opex.
5. State the interface with neighbouring lots
The most expensive failures happen between suppliers: biofilter and oxygenation, feeder and monitoring, backup power and life support. Your RFQ should name the interface points and ask each supplier to confirm, in writing, what they need from the adjacent lot and what they guarantee into it.
6. Keep your identity out of the first round
Prices move when a supplier knows who is buying, who else is bidding, or how urgent the project is. A managed process keeps the buyer anonymous until proposals are in and normalised — that is how FishMatch runs every RFQ: a person reviews your brief, matched suppliers quote against one identical scope, and you see comparable proposals before anyone sees you.
7. Plan the comparison before the quotes arrive
Decide now how you will score: capex, guaranteed performance, opex, delivery, commissioning support, references. A scoring sheet written before proposals land stops the loudest sales process from winning. How to compare aquaculture proposals line by line has the normalisation method, and how to evaluate aquaculture equipment suppliers covers the supplier side.
The short version
Duty conditions first, one scope for everyone, guarantees instead of brochures, opex in the quote, interfaces in writing, anonymity in round one, and a scoring sheet before proposals arrive. Buyers who do all seven get quotes they can put in front of a lender. Start yours with the RFQ wizard or the buyer journey map.
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
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