Training and R&D on a working land-based site.
The industry’s bottleneck is people, not tanks. Ontec Academy trains operators, students and teachers in land-based farming at our site in Måløy.
Headquarters, pilot plant and lab.
Ontec Academy is Ontec’s headquarters and a fourth-generation pilot plant. It houses a Ø10 m RAS IPU, an industrial-scale production tank for R&D, and a research laboratory, and doubles as a visitor centre for Ontec and OFS Norge. Built with support from Innovation Norway, it has run two complete production cycles of Atlantic salmon.
Your operators, trained on real tanks.
Training is part of every delivery: practical operation, maintenance, critical operations and industrial production of salmon, on a working site.
Ask about trainingResearch on water, recycling and fish biology.
Ontec runs in-house research at the Academy’s pilot plant and laboratory, so what we learn feeds into the next design.
Water quality
We model and monitor water chemistry in every tank, keeping CO₂ and ammonia well within biological limits, even at high densities.
Recycling and reuse
Parametric hybrid recirculates without a biofilter and uses at least 50% less new water than conventional hybrid flow-through.
Fish biology and health
Smolt health in land-based systems: biomarkers for stress, disease and immune status, and how to monitor them through the move to seawater.
Mucosal health and welfare of salmon smolt in land-based RAS
An industrial PhD led by Ontec with the Faculty of Biosciences at NMBU, supported by the Research Council of Norway. PhD candidate Sandra Milosevic studies smolt before and after the move from freshwater to seawater, the most vulnerable stage in a salmon’s life, to find new biomarkers of stress, disease and immune status in the gills and other mucosal tissues.
The goal is a practical set of monitoring parameters that improves fish health and welfare and reduces losses in land-based farms. Early findings include a synergy between certain bacteria that shortens biofilter start-up in RAS. Three scientific papers and a thesis are planned, and the next trial looks at how turbidity affects mucosal health.
Built with the schools that train the industry.
Schools and research partners working with the Academy.
A national RAS course
Ontec wrote the curriculum for a national course in land-based farming for upper secondary teachers, run by Måløy upper secondary school. Teachers from all over Norway have taken part.
Trained on site
Our apprentice operator earned the trade certificate with distinction. Students are placed at the Academy, and school classes visit for lectures and demonstrations.
New courses, fast
With Fagskulen i Vestland, Ontec helped define new programmes in leadership of land-based farming and of marine aquaculture operations.
Planning an upgrade or a new facility? Let’s look at your site.
Talk to the engineers, or come and see the system in Måløy.
