Innovator Profiles
Raivo Puurits, Triton PR Eel Farm, Estonia
Raivo Puurits was a fisherman on a freshwater lake where the stocked eel was the main source of income for fishermen during the 1980-90s. The glass eels were regularly stocked into the lake in the Soviet Union time. Raivo was the first to realize that the catches would soon decline as the stockings almost ceased after the collapse of the Soviet regime. He saw an alternative in creating a rearing center to produce large stocking eels in a recirculation system. He learned a lot about eel farming from a first visit to a Swedish fish farm in 1997. Soon he realized that instead of producing only young eel for stocking, market size eel could also be reared in recirculation system, and could be sold to the European market. Since then he has built up two facilities - one for glass eels and another for market size eels - these together produce 80 tonnes of fish per annum. One of his plans is to build a third farm house for eels of middle size, and so double production. But as eel farming is quite an unstable business it is only an idea so far. All sales are currently going through an Estonian export company to the Netherlands, where the eels are smoked and marketed.
Raivo Puurits on his lovingly hand-restored motorbike
To the question how he had learned about eel farming, Raivo replied that just by going round and looking at other systems, talking to as many people as possible, and reading up on technical topics. Raivo was, no doubt, helped by his short time education at the agricultural university but he has achieved success mostly due to his obvious practical skills. In his spare time he is restoring a 1937 Velocette motorcycle, manufacturing some parts himself in his workshop. At the same time his expertise in biochemical processes and technical solutions of different types of biofilters is at the leading edge of developments.
However, developing the eel farm has not been without problems. The worst moment was in 2003 when all the stock was lost because of a momentary power cut. The fuses were switched off, an alarm system did not work, and four pumps out of five stopped for the whole night. This was a very expensive lesson as insurance cover has not been available at a realistic rate. After this, Raivo has duplicated and improved the alarm system to ensure that this does not happen again.
The first small eel farm unit
Despite this setback, Raivo did not give up. He took out a bank loan, and also some good acquaintances helped him financially. In general, he feels that fish farming in Estonia is fairly competitive with other European countries. Since the overall aquaculture production in Estonia is too low for a feed plant to be viable (approximately 500 tonnes in total), feed must therefore be imported from Denmark or Finland, which is increasing costs. However, his opinion is that transport of feed does not raise feed prices excessively, and compared to other European countries, labour is cheap and the Estonian people have the virtue of persistence. Raivo does not see any change to that situation in the foreseeable future.
As for the future, Raivo has many more ideas for improving and expanding his eel rearing system. However, he is also consulting local trout producers to develop recycle trout farms using many of the lessons learned with the eel systems. And he is even going to invest in such a farm, believing that it is possible to produce trout in Estonia at a price competitive with the European market.
Juvenile eels in excellent quality water thanks to the recycle unit
Raivo's success has undoubtedly been due to his practical skills, willingness to take risks and try out new ideas, readiness to network with others and keenness to learn from them. You can contact with Raivo at .
