Pohang City Eyes Salmon Market Rivaling Semiconductors... Establishing 70,000-Pyeong 'Smart Aquaculture Industrial Complex'

400 Billion Invested in Janggi-myeon Area in 2021... Advanced ICT+AI+Big Data Convergence Applied

Perspective view of the 'Salmon Smart Aquaculture Industrial Complex' to be established in the Janggi-myeon area of Pohang.

[Asia Economy Yeongnam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Park Dong-wook] Pohang City, Gyeongbuk Province, announced on the 9th that it will promote the "Smart Aquaculture Cluster Development Project," considering salmon farming as a new future food industry.

Starting next year, Pohang City plans to invest 40 billion KRW to develop a smart aquaculture testbed for salmon production, a large-scale fish farm, processing facilities, distribution, and sales facilities on a 70,000-pyeong site in Janggi-myeon, Nam-gu.

The large-scale fish farm will operate with an automated and intelligent system utilizing Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies such as a recirculating filtration system, information and communication technology (ICT), artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and big data.

The Janggi-myeon area, where the aquaculture industrial complex is planned, is adjacent to the sea and rivers, providing an environment suitable for salmon’s life cycle characteristics?freshwater during the juvenile stage and seawater during adulthood. Pohang City also explained that the site offers a wide area for continuous expansion, enabling the project to achieve an annual production scale of 1,000 to 2,000 tons.

The global salmon market is valued at 60 trillion KRW, comparable to the semiconductor market (67 trillion KRW). As a globally preferred fish species with an established international market, it offers high market stability, and domestic salmon consumption is gradually increasing, especially among younger generations.

Domestic salmon imports reached about 40,000 tons and 500 billion KRW in 2019, rapidly becoming the largest consumed fish species in Korea. This species is entirely dependent on overseas imports, with large-scale farming conducted only in some advanced fishing countries such as Norway and Chile.

Mayor Lee Kang-deok of Pohang expressed strong enthusiasm, stating, "By utilizing Fourth Industrial Revolution bases such as POSTECH, AI and Robotics Research Institute, and Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, we will steadily promote this large-scale smart salmon aquaculture cluster development project and establish a new model for the aquaculture industry, including salmon exports and job creation."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.