Business Case – Establishment of a New Sustainable Aquaculture Innovation Function (SAIC)

Annex A

SAIC alignment with Scottish Government policy

The new company will support the sustainable growth of Scottish aquaculture by enabling high quality innovation. Its work will focus on reducing the sector’s environmental footprint while delivering production efficiencies and increasing the sector’s economic contribution.

The new entity will provide an opportunity to refocus innovation efforts on two critical priorities: addressing the impacts of climate change and improving production efficiency. This activity aligns with a number of Scottish Government policy areas:

A Blue Economy Vision for Scotland^[3]

The Scottish Government recognises through its Blue Economy Vision that the sustainable and productive use of Scotland’s marine resources will support ecosystem health, improved livelihoods and economic prosperity.

At its core, the vision recognises that economic prosperity and well-being are embedded within nature and anticipates that a healthy marine environment will be enabled by innovative economic activity. The vision anticipates that established and emerging marine sectors will be innovative, entrepreneurial, productive and internationally competitive. This will be realised through sectors investing in emerging technologies, supported by a skilled workforce and a developing Scottish supply chain.

The Blue Economy vision provides the context for marine related activity across the Scottish Government. It sits alongside other existing high-level government strategies, including but not limited to the Environment Strategy, The National Plan for Scotland’s Islands and the National Planning Framework, and Scotland’s National Strategy for Economic Transformation.

SAIC alignment:

• Supports innovation that reduces environmental impacts on marine ecosystems
• enables sustainable growth in aquaculture
• strengthens Scotland’s international leadership in sustainably produced seafood
• supports resilient coastal and island communities through innovation-led growth

Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture^[4]

The Scottish Government’s 2023 Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture develops thinking on innovation in aquaculture and recognises that innovation is a key enabler for the development of aquaculture.

New technology and approaches, underpinned by sound science, have the potential to unlock opportunities in productivity, improved health and welfare and reductions in adverse environmental impact. Innovation can help to find solutions that deliver across these priorities and promote solutions that move away from historic trade-offs.

SAIC alignment:

• Accelerates adoption of best practices and low-impact technologies
• Enables collaboration between industry regulators and researchers

National innovation strategy 2023 to 2033^[5]

The Scottish Government published the ten-year National Innovation Strategy in 2023. The strategy supports an approach to innovation based around the concept of ‘innovation clusters’. Economic Clusters consist of concentrations of interconnected businesses, supply chains, labour, education and public sector organisations all operating in a particular field. Together, these actors create an ecosystem of collaboration, healthy competition, knowledge exchange and close working partnerships.

The innovation strategy identifies such clusters as driving the pace and quality of innovation; increasing productivity and boosting wage growth. While work in support of Scottish aquaculture can be found nationwide much of the production and supply chain activity is located within the Highlands and Islands and can be viewed as informal innovation cluster with an opportunity to more formally develop a cluster in this geographic area in the future.

Effective research and development can improve our understanding and increase the sector’s resilience to current and emerging issues. For example, by minimising environmental impact and increasing biodiversity, reducing emissions and adapting to climate change, improving health and welfare, whilst continuing to deliver economic and social opportunities for Scotland.

For innovation to be an effective enabler, all stakeholders should encourage the deployment and monitoring of an increasing number of demonstrably effective technologies and approaches which can be scaled up for application. Efforts to address barriers to upscaling of new approaches and technologies are vital to facilitate more commercially viable applied innovations.

SAIC alignment:

• Monitoring of sector challenges and opportunities
• Maintenance of the SAIC Consortium and a strong network of problem owners, producers, academics and innovators
• Established processes to enable project partnerships able to manage financial and IP issues
• An existing knowledge exchange programme