Aquaculture CAPEX benchmarks: useful, and easy to misuse
Cost-per-tonne benchmarks are useful for early bracketing and useless for commitment. They rarely state whether land, civils, buildings, backup power, effluent treatment, working capital and import duty are included, and they collapse very different climates, energy prices and labour markets into one number. Use them to size a range, then replace them package by package with real quotations.
- Always write down what a benchmark includes before you use it in a client document.
- Present early costs as a range with a stated confidence level, not a point number.
- Working capital through the first production cycle is the most commonly omitted line.
- Replace benchmark lines with quotations as soon as each package is scoped.
What benchmarks usually exclude
- Land acquisition or lease, and site preparation on difficult ground.
- Buildings, roads, fencing and site drainage.
- Grid connection, transformers and backup generation.
- Effluent treatment where local limits are strict.
- Freight, insurance, import duty and local installation labour.
- Working capital: feed, seed, salaries and energy until first harvest revenue.
A defensible early-stage cost presentation
- State the design basis in one line above the number.
- Give a low-high range and label it Class 5 / order-of-magnitude.
- List the excluded scope explicitly under the table.
- Show contingency separately, not buried in the line items.
Moving from benchmark to quotation
Package the project (water treatment, aeration, tanks or ponds, feeding, monitoring, harvest, cold chain) and take the highest-value packages to RFQ first. Each real offer both narrows the budget and exposes scope questions the benchmark hid.
FAQ
Related
Hand a client project to the concierge
You keep the client and the technical mandate. FishMatch Group runs the private supplier outreach and returns normalised offers.
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