A sea of opportunity
INTERVIEW WITH PHILIPPE LÉGER
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Philippe Léger, former CEO of INVE Aquaculture (INVE)*, the pioneer of advanced nutrition products, explains how he entered the aquaculture industry in the 80’s. The mission to produce protein that will support a growing population is what inspired Philippe at the outset, and still does today.
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INVE Aquaculture is part of Benchmark Holdings plc.
Can you start by explaining your background, and how you started working in the aquaculture industry? I graduated in 1978 with an MD in Pharmaceutical Sciences and was invited to study further for a PhD in virology, toxicology and organic pharmaceutic synthesis. I did, however, choose to do something ‘different’. I enrolled for an MD in Environmental Science and Management. In classes on mariculture — where I first learned about aquaculture — I met Patrick Sorgeloos as a captivating teacher who is now referred to as the ‘father of Artemia’. He invited me to undertake a PhD on the application of Artemia as a food source in aquaculture. Aquaculture at that time was a very small and emerging industry that really fascinated me for its potential of radically changing the way seafood could be produced in a sustainable way. Already at that time overfishing and pollution of oceans was in the news. During my PhD there were a number of interesting things we discovered as a team of young bioengineers and biologists. Our findings motivated us to set up a spin off from the University of Ghent and in 1983 the company was incorporated as Artemia Systems (now INVE). Our pioneering work stemmed from our scientific findings and ideas. Translating them into technical products that were of interest to solving some biological hurdles faced by the aquaculture industry under development. At that time hatchery production of shrimp and fish fry was the bottleneck for the growth of the industry. Alongside this we worked to specify and improve the quality parameters of artemia as a hatchery feed and developed a number of products that we still sell today as artemia and live food enrichment diets.
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