October 2026 — A farm, a market survey and a patent

Issue 1 · October 2026 — the monthly update from America’s domestic shrimp farm, published on the 15th of each month. Welcome to the AmeriPrawn monthly update. Once a month we share where we are in building America's fresh, never-frozen shrimp supply - the farm, the science, the market and the team. Here is where things stand.

AmeriPrawn was founded in April to build America's first commercial-scale domestic shrimp farm, in New Haven, Connecticut, using Israeli-developed recirculating aquaculture technology from The Aqua Consortium (Switzerland and Israel). The US imports over 90% of its shrimp, nearly all of it frozen. We intend to sell live and never-frozen Pacific white shrimp to New York and Boston, two hours from the farm.

Six months in, we have a building, a design, a first patent filing, a market we have walked store by store and a funding plan in motion. Here is where each of those stands.

01 The Farm

Our first facility is a 22,000 square foot industrial building on Davenport Avenue in New Haven. We signed a letter of intent in July and are now negotiating the lease. The building sits in an Opportunity Zone, about two hours from both Manhattan and Boston, and close to UConn's marine science campus and the NOAA lab in Milford.

The schematic design is done. It fits eleven grow-out tanks and three nursery tanks around the building's existing columns, with the water treatment and services block tucked into the columned pocket at one end. On that layout the farm produces roughly 100 tonnes of shrimp a year, which is the Phase 1 target.

The farm will be built alongside a working lab. The lab oversees production, develops the protocols and is where the next patents come from. Post-larvae for the first facility will be bought in rather than bred on site; a hatchery comes later.

02 The Timeline

Here is the plan from today to the first harvest. Dates are targets, and we will report against them each month.

• December 2026 – Lease finalized; first financing completed

• March 2027 – Permits completed

• June 2027 – Construction completed

• July 2027 – Operations begin: lab and 25-tonne farm

• October 2027 – First batch harvested; Begin expansion to 100-tonne farm

The first shrimp come out of the water about a year from now. Between here and there, the two items that gate everything else are the lease and the first financing, both due to be completed by December.

03 The Market

During the first two weeks of September, I spent several days walking the market we intend to serve: the New Fulton Fish Market at Hunts Point, seafood retailers in coastal Connecticut and Asian supermarkets and Cantonese banquet restaurants in Flushing, Queens, Sunset Park Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. Over 30 real data points.

Two findings shaped our thinking. First, not one of the Connecticut or Fulton sellers had ever had access to live shrimp, including two with live-holding tanks and one that fishes with its own boat. That reads as absent supply, not absent demand. Second, in Flushing, Sunset Park and Manhattan live Pacific white shrimp sells for $30-40 a pound where it is available, and it is rarely and seasonably available. Those animals are 9-15 grams, roughly half the size we will grow. Live rock shrimp (which has ~30% of meat/weight due to its thick shell) sells for $53-$60 per pound.

The Asian market wants its shrimp alive and the general American market wants shrimp cleaned and head-off. So the plan is two products from one farm: never-frozen, cleaned, head-off shrimp as the main line for restaurants and retail, and live shrimp for the Asian supermarkets and Cantonese restaurants that already run live tanks. One Flushing restaurant told us it would take 500-1,000 pounds of live shrimp a week, year-round. One retailer in Manhattan (Grand St.) told us it would take all our first year produce (25 tons/annum). We have used AI to create a 3-minute introductory movie about AmeriPrawn with Chinese subtitles, to help reach out to Chinese-speaking customers. View it here:

The full 25-page market study is available to partners under NDA. Contact us at oren@AmeriPrawn.com if you would like it.

04 The Science

The lab in New Haven opens in July 2027, but the scientific team at The Aqua Consortium is not waiting for the building. Work is already under way since April in five fields, each chosen because it moves one of the four numbers that decide whether a shrimp farm makes money: density, mortality, cost and quality.

• Screening. An early-warning system that reads the tanks continuously and flags trouble before it becomes mortality. Our first patent application, filed in July, covers it.

• Feed. A recipe formulated for dense RAS shrimp farming, including the plant-based replacement for fishmeal described below.

• Genomics. Pacific white shrimp selected for better nutrition and welfare in a recirculating system.

• Logistics. Systems that keep shrimp alive and in condition through transit and retail: 72 hours with under 10% mortality.

• Density and water. The vertical shelving grow-out system, water filtration and mineral extraction, and a set of smaller innovations that together raise density, cut mortality, lower cost and improve the shrimp. Several of these will become patent filings of their own over the coming year.

The logistics work is furthest along. In September Dr. Eran Hadas, our Chief Scientist, completed the protocol for getting live shrimp from tank to table: conditioning before transport, chilled oxygenated transport at 17°C and a dedicated recirculating holding system we supply to each retail outlet and restock every second day. That protocol is what lets a New Haven farm sell live shrimp in NYC.

Dr. Hadas and I have also recorded a "Meet the Scientists" session, a walk through the technology and the team at The Aqua Consortium. If you would like the transcript, contact us and we will send it oren@ameriprawn.com

05 On Fishmeal

Last week The New York Times Magazine published a long piece on an uncomfortable fact about aquaculture: much of the farmed fish and shrimp the world eats is raised on feed made from wild-caught fish, ground into fishmeal and fish oil. Article can be viewed here (gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/10/08/magazine/farm-raised-fish-aquaculture-overfishing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IVE.Qavt.zEf1AD_ivi2j&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Farming seafood to relieve pressure on the ocean, and then emptying the ocean to feed the farms, is a real contradiction, and the industry has been slow to confront it.

We want to be clear about where we stand. Shrimp feed has historically leaned on fishmeal, and we are not starting from zero on this. We are already working with feed which has less than 25% of fishmeal and our goal is a fully fishmeal-free diet by 2028. Feed is one of the research verticals in our lab program precisely because this is where a land-based farm can prove it is better for the ocean, not just closer to the customer.

06 Funding and Partners

On the grant side, our $700,000 USDA NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant application went in on July 23, with a decision expected in the first half of 2027. The federal SBIR cycle reopened on October 1 and we are preparing submissions to USDA and EPA, with NOAA to follow when its solicitation posts. We are working with UConn and Connecticut Sea Grant on the research partnerships several of these programs require.

Phase 1 is financed through a combination of non-dilutive grant capital and private investment, structured so that construction begins once the New Haven lease is finalized.

Looking past New Haven, we have begun talking with economic development partners in eastern Pennsylvania about a second, much larger farm sited next to a data center, using its waste heat to warm our water and its access real estate for our facility. Shrimp like 28°C; data centers throw that heat away. More on this when there is something to show.

07 The Team

Two appointments this month, both people who will make the farm a better business.

Michael McNicholas, CEO of Oddisea SuperFrozen, joins AmeriPrawn as Special Advisor for Seafood Markets. Michael has spent his career in seafood distribution and knows the buyers, the margins and the logistics of getting product from a farm to a plate in the Northeast. He will guide our pricing, our channel strategy and our first commercial relationships.

Zack Hitchcock joins as Special Advisor for Facilities and Construction. Zack will work with our architects, engineers and contractors on the Davenport Avenue fit-out, from permits through commissioning, so that the June 2027 construction date holds.

How to help this month

If you run or know a restaurant or market that would carry live or never-frozen shrimp, introduce us – we are collecting letters of intent from buyers now. And if you simply want to see the building, come to New Haven; I am there most weeks.

Thank you for reading. The next issue comes mid November.

Oren Heiman CEO, AmeriPrawn Inc. oren@AmeriPrawn.com  ·  www.AmeriPrawn.com