Techno-economic Analysis (TEA) of Extruded Aquafeeds

The worldwide decline and overexploitation of ocean fisheries stocks had provided an incentive for the rapid growth of aquaculture. The aquaculture industry has been recognized as the fastest-growing food production system globally, with a 10% increase in production per year and is one of the most reliable and sustainable growth markets for manufactured feeds. Extrusion technology has been extensively used in the modern aquatic feed manufacturing, due to nutritional, physical properties improvements and cost effectiveness of feeds. Cost related to aquatic feed remains the biggest challenge, especially for small-scale producers. In order to understand costs and potential breakeven points, a single screw extruder and three different production scenarios (0.2, 2 and 20 t/day) throughput were used to develop techno-economic models for small-scale producers of extruded aquatic feeds. The results show annualized capital costs decreased as production capacity increased. Thus, aquatic feed producers could use this tool to evaluate annual costs and benefits to determine processing economics. Producers will have to consider the ingredients used, though, as raw ingredients constitute the greatest cost for the production of feeds.