Ref:750/03

Yesterday, the Marlborough District Council agreed to support the establishment of the Nelson Marlborough seafood cluster, which aims to make the top of the South Island an international leader in seafood education, training, research and intellectual innovation.

Industry representative on the cluster, Sanford Havelock manager Bruce Cardwell, said it was likely Nelson would become a base for research, education and development in wild fisheries and Marlborough would be the centre of aquaculture.

By farming smarter, developing new species and upskilling industry, Marlborough could become an international leader in aquaculture and expand its exports fivefold from $200 million by 2020, he said.

Cluster chairman Ian Kearney said the entire initiative was about groups with a stake in seafood working together "to see if we can enhance the seafood industry in the Top of the South".

Major companies such as Sanford, Sealord and Talley's were involved, as well as research groups such as the Cawthron Institute, Crop and Food and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

The Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology and Otago and Canterbury Universities had taken a stake in the cluster and seafood associated industries such as engineering and port companies were also involved, he said.

Mr Cardwell said in terms of quantity, Marlborough was the centre of aquaculture, with 80 percent of mussel and salmon production occurring here.

But the industry had long been "in survival mode and on the defensive" and had not put money back into the development needed to increase its value, he said.

"At the moment we feel we are not developing our infrastructure as it should be...I think we'll move away from producing commodities to producing knowledge," he said.

If the region was going to "get smarter" about what it did it would need to have a base and a vision, he said.

"At the moment what we see are mussel farms but the vision for the future is to be farming other species. And so what we are wanting to see in the future is species being developed that are higher value.

"To do that we need a combination of industry, education and research."

He said the initiative would involve the development of a fairly basic field research facility priced at between $500,000 and $750,000.

The Cawthron Institute had expressed an interest in developing a base in Marlborough and it was hoped other research institutes would not be far behind, he said.

His ideal was to have pragmatic scientists in Marlborough to support the knowledge and observations of people working in the industry, he said.

"What we really want to do is have the people that are on the water drinking at the same pub as the scientists."

Council representative on the cluster Councillor Francis Maher said the potential of the scheme was "absolutely unlimited". He said it was largely about harnessing the knowledge of Marlborough's pioneering aquaculture industry.