Most people who reach out start by asking what a container costs. That is the wrong first question. The right one is what role the container plays on your farm in five years.
A container at the back of a 40-hectare family vegetable farm producing for that farm alone is a different asset from a container at the centre of a 500-hectare operation supplying a district, which is different again from a container belonging to a cooperative distributing to its members. Same hardware, same biology, three different businesses.
Three questions, answered before you pick
How much capital can you commit today without affecting the rest of the operation? A 40ft container is USD 350,000 outright, a 20ft is USD 175,000 and a 10ft is USD 90,000, from the company’s locked commercial register at deck slide 09. Lease terms are quoted on application; the reason is below.
Who operates it, and what are they used to running? One container with a part-time operator is a different management problem from ten across three sites with a shared technical team.
Who is the customer for the fertilizer and the fish? "Me, my own land" is a different business from "my cooperative members" or "every vegetable farm within a hundred kilometres".
Model 1: buy outright
You take title day one, depreciate the asset on your own balance sheet, keep everything the container produces, and can sell it, transfer it or borrow against it. A royalty of USD 2 per litre applies to fertilizer produced for sale or use, on this path as on the lease path. There is no royalty on fish.
Commissioning and operator training come with the container. Hardware and operations carry a one-year warranty on tank, pump, filtration and controls, with technical support during that period. Support beyond year one is by separate agreement, and no document on file sets a longer term.
Fits when: you already farm at scale, you have the capital or financing that beats the asset’s payback, you intend to sell some of the output rather than only consume it, and you want the asset on your books.
Does not fit when: you are not yet sure the system suits your land, water and crop. Run a trial first. The trials page sets out the entry conditions.
Model 2: lease-to-own
The lease exists for operators who would rather keep working capital in the field than write a cheque against a fixed asset.
The structure is not published here, and the reason is worth stating plainly. Three sets of lease terms are on file, with different deposits, different monthly figures and different lengths. They do not reconcile, and until one governing signed document exists, quoting any of them here would be picking one at random. Commercial terms including lease structures are set in the signed agreement and quoted on application.
What is settled on the lease path: royalty is USD 2 per litre of fertilizer produced for sale or use, there is no royalty on fish, and the same one-year hardware and operations warranty applies. No document on file gives a right to cancel and return the container inside the first year.
Fits when: you want to start producing without committing the capital, you want to test the system in your own climate, soil and crop mix, and you want a monthly cost line you can plan around.
Does not fit when: you have the capital and confidence already. Buying produces the better long-run number.
Model 3: cooperative deployment
A cooperative, or a vehicle attached to one, places containers at hub sites: cooperative warehouses, large member farms, shared land. Members take fertilizer at internal cost. The cooperative books margin on the fish into regional hospitality, wholesale and export channels.
On coverage, one honest piece of arithmetic. The season programme is 15 to 25 litres per hectare, capped at 30 where fertigation events follow, from the FishIt integration guide, section 1. A thousand litres therefore treats roughly 40 to 66 hectares for a season. That is a design output computed from a design rate, not a measured deployment, and it multiplies out only as far as the container’s real annual output, which is being metered and has not been published. Coverage worked out from the fertigation injection ratio rather than from the season programme overstates the hectares by roughly an order of magnitude, so the figure above uses the programme.
Fits when: you serve fifty members or more, you already route inputs through the cooperative, you have hub sites or member farms that can host, and you are planning a multi-year deployment rather than a transaction.
Does not fit when: you are buying for a single farm. The organizational overhead only pays back when the deployment is shared.
Model 4: anchor farmer
One farm, usually among the largest in its region, places several containers, covers its own land first, then supplies neighbours and contracted regional buyers, with the fish going through a regional cold chain. Over time the anchor builds a sub-distributor network and is running a regional supply business with a farm at the centre.
We do not sign more than one anchor per region, and territory exclusivity is part of the arrangement. What we will not do is put a projected regional volume on this page. Until output is metered and a retail band is confirmed, any such figure would be a design output dressed as a forecast.
Fits when: you already farm at regional scale, you are willing to run a sales operation as well as a farm, and you can carry the working capital for inventory, packaging and distribution.
Does not fit when: you want to start small and grow, or you do not want to manage a sales motion.
Choosing between two
- Buy against lease. If the cost of the capital you would deploy is materially below the long-run royalty and rent drag, buy. Otherwise lease and revisit at year three. You cannot finish this comparison until the lease terms are settled, which is a reason to ask for them in writing before signing anything.
- Lease against cooperative. If you are a member, lease your own. If you are leadership, the cooperative is the leadership move.
- Anchor against cooperative. The anchor captures more margin per container and requires a different operating organization. If you have member relationships but not a sales operation, cooperative.
| Model | Capital | Output destination | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buy | USD 350,000 once for the 40ft | Your farm plus nearby buyers | Established farms with capital |
| Lease | Quoted on application | Your farm plus nearby buyers | Operators keeping capital in the field |
| Cooperative | Cooperative finance | Members plus regional channels | Directors with 50 or more members |
| Anchor | Several containers | Regional supply and export | Largest regional farms |
What does not change across the four
The container is the same container and the biology is the same biology. Training, operational support, parts and consumables, and the licensing pathway are common. What differs is who owns the asset, who carries the ramp risk, and where the output goes.
The ramp is real in every model. Fish biomass takes months to reach steady state and fertilizer output follows biomass. Year one is not the steady-state year, in any structure.
Next step
Pick the model that matches your operation, then apply. The form asks which path you prefer, and "not sure yet" is a legitimate answer. The next conversation walks your land, your water, your current fertilizer line and your buyer relationships. If a container fits, we say which model and why. If it does not, we say that.
For the economics and what is still unmeasured in them, read what we can and cannot tell you about the payback. For the laboratory work on the product itself, the evidence page.