Algae Growing Business

I chose a technology that over-expresses genes in algae to increase biomass production by 40% to 80% in C02 elevated areas. This technology also increases photosynthetic CO2 assimilation. With these overexpressed genes, oil content used in industrial chemicals and biofuel increase 4 fold. This technology license associate is Dario Valenzuela and was posted on November 12, 2011. My product development idea involves finding the right strain of algae for fish and livestock feed with focus on fish feed. Algae can be produced at 5 times more yields per acre of land then corn, soybeans and other substitutes used for fish and livestock feed. Algae produces 38 times more usable protein per acre of land per year than subsitutes for fish feed. The Aquatic industry is expected to grow from 80 million to 160 million of farmed fish in 20 years. The propriety stain of algae can also be mad into omega-3 products. Omega-3 demand is set to double and with demand already not meeting the supply; there isn’t another sustainable option to meet that demand. Omega-3 can be derived from fish, but taking from algae cuts out the middleman and therefore is much more efficient. With the technology provided I would be able to increase my yields greatly and be able to lower my prices and be competitive in the market. With low energy input costs and only using only a fraction of water and land algae has potential to be produced at very low production costs. The primary customers would be fish farmers followed by livestock farmers. The fish farmers would be my entry target market but my belief is that with product development using the algae other markets will be available. Energy, chemical, and supplement companies could be eventual customers. Once the proper strains are found highly efficient Omega-3 products would be easy to sell at a high margin by supplement companies. The oil from the algae can be sold to the energy and chemical companies to make biofuel, and industrial chemicals. The