Value 01
Quiet competence
We do not write copy that shouts. We list count sizes, harvest times, and tank-by-tank data. We let the audit reports, the postlarvae PCR results, and the chef relationships speak. The product is too premium to advertise.
Story
Pacific White Shrimp, indoors, in Langley. Built to last. Built to feed.
North 49 Shrimp Co. is a British Columbia indoor aquaculture venture. Twenty modules in a leased bay, eight kilometres from the Costco Langley depot, producing roughly fifty-two to sixty-two thousand pounds of live-weight Pacific White Shrimp per year in Phase 1 (verified vendor spec; original upper-bound 66K reflected peak-condition marketing claim). The plan is conservative on capacity and disciplined on gates. This page describes why the venture exists, what was learned from the Langley operator that closed in 2019, and how the company is governed.
20boxes
Phase 1 capacity
Each module is an independent containment tank
52–62Klb/yr
Live-weight production
Verified vendor spec; 66K is upper-bound marketing ceiling
8km
To Costco Langley DC
Same-day live channel to Vancouver
0antibiotics
Closed-loop biofloc
No ocean discharge, no air freight
Why this venture exists
The supply problem. Western Canada imports almost all of its shrimp. The dominant supplier behind Costco’s Kirkland Signature frozen shrimp, of India, has been on for chloramphenicol since November 2020 and recalled twenty-four SKUs for Salmonella that same year. On top of that compliance file, the proposed compounds duties on Indian and Vietnamese imports from ten percent in 2026 to forty percent by 2028. The incumbent is fragile and fragility is rerouting volume into Canada at exactly the moment traceability and origin scrutiny tighten inside Canadian buyers.
The opportunity. British Columbia has unused ex-cannabis capacity left over from the 2018–2022 build-out, purpose-built for power, ventilation, and water service. The province has cheap, clean electricity from and competitive natural gas from , which is what makes cold-climate biofloc economically real in winter. And the Lower Mainland sits at the intersection of Costco Western Canada distribution, the largest Asian-Canadian restaurant base in the country, and the year-round Cantonese banquet trade that wants live at the table.
The technology. The Atarraya Air Shrimp Box is a modular, sensor-driven, flat-packed tank. Per-box annual production sits at roughly fifteen hundred kilograms live weight across four sixteen-week cycles. No antibiotics. No ocean discharge. No air freight. Twenty independent compartments at Phase 1, scaling to one hundred at Phase 2 conditional on gates defined on /roadmap.
The frame. Build cautiously. Prove Phase 1 economics with restaurant and Asian retail anchors before any Costco capital expenditure. Live HOSO and live-tank retail clear the certification gap during the ten-to-sixteen months it takes to layer the GFSI and Costco audit stack. The live channel is the cash bridge to the scale channel, not a press release.
Precedent
Lessons from Berezan
operated in Langley for twenty-two months and closed in September 2019. Same geography. Same species — . The proximate cause was an outbreak traced to postlarvae imported from Texas — postlarvae from those source states are now banned by , a regulation that Berezan’s closure helped create. The stated downstream cause of closure was a labour-cost overrun the operator was unable to absorb against ramp-stage revenue.
Pretending the precedent doesn’t exist is the wrong move for investors, for grant officers underwriting the venture, and for the toll-processor who distributed Berezan’s product. The right move is naming the precedent and the four specific contingencies the venture treats as non-negotiable.
| Failure mode | Contingency |
|---|---|
| PL biosecurity | CFIA-cleared American Penaeid postlarvae plus on-site quarantine raceway plus PCR pre-stock screening. |
| Labour overrun | Lean Day-1 automation. Five-FTE Phase 1 cell with cross-training rather than headcount-by-function staffing. |
| Single-RAS failure | : any single failure is contained to five percent of capacity, not one hundred percent. |
| Cloud dependency | plus permitting at least seventy-two hours of autonomous operation if the Atarraya cloud is unreachable. |
What this company is built on
Three values. Each value is a constraint on how the operation runs, not a slogan to put on a wall.
Value 02
Radical transparency
Every gate that conditions Phase 2 is published on /roadmap with a target close date and an owner. Every risk that could close the venture is published on /risk with a mitigation and a kill condition. Investors and grant officers see the same dashboard the founding team uses.
Value 03
Resilience over speed
Indoor RAS history rewards operators who scale carefully and punishes operators who scale fast on borrowed capital. Phase 2 is gated on Phase 1 trailing EBITDA, on Atarraya yield validation, on energy actual versus model, and on a signed Costco PO — not on calendar.
Why British Columbia
The site selection is not sentimental. Four conditions in the Lower Mainland combine to make indoor shrimp aquaculture economically defensible here in a way it is not in most of North America.
Logistics
Same-day to the channels that pay
Eight kilometres to the Costco Langley distribution centre. Roughly thirty-five kilometres to Albion Fisheries in Richmond and to YVR. Restaurant deliveries arrive same-day, refrigerated, never frozen.
Energy
Hydro power and competitive gas
supplies one of the cleanest industrial grids in North America. natural gas for radiant heat and heated slab is materially cheaper per kilowatt-hour-equivalent than electric resistance.
Regulation
Aquaculture-friendly federal and provincial frame
and BC provincial regulators publish a documented pathway for indoor aquaculture under the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations and the BC Municipal Wastewater Regulation. The path is long; it is also navigable.
Demand
The Asian-Canadian premium-fresh market
Metro Vancouver has the largest Asian-Canadian demographic share of any Canadian metro and the only year-round Cantonese banquet live-tank trade at scale. The alone moves live wholesale prices up fifteen to twenty-five percent.
Land acknowledgement
The Lower Mainland is the unceded traditional territory of the Stó:lō Nation and adjacent Coast Salish Nations — including the Kwantlen First Nation (closest to a Langley site; territory recorded as the largest group on the lower Fraser, 1827), the Katzie First Nation (Pitt Meadows headquarters, overlapping Lower Fraser territory), and the Semiahmoo First Nation.
North 49 will use the Kwantlen First Nation’s published referrals channel referrals@kwantlenlands.ca as the primary point of first contact once a specific lease site is identified, and to engage at the Nation’s pace and on the Nation’s terms. The company will not adopt any Indigenous-derived consumer name without explicit, documented, and sustained engagement; the “Salish Sea” backup name was withdrawn 2026-05-25 after verification confirmed K’ómoks First Nation has operated Salish Sea Foods since January 2013.
How this company is governed
The governance posture is the single most important accountability frame the founding team can offer to anyone underwriting the venture — whether that is an institutional investor, a federal grant officer, or a member of the public reading this page. Four choices structure it.
01 Legal vehicle
A standalone BC CCPC under the BCBCA
North 49 Shrimp Co. Ltd. is a sibling incorporated under the . It is not held under any other operating entity in the founder’s portfolio, which contains aquaculture risk inside this company and preserves the small-business deduction.
02 Statutory board
Three directors: founder, lead investor, independent
The statutory board is three seats. The founder holds one. The lead investor holds one. The third seat is an independent director jointly nominated by the founder and the lead investor. Reserved matters and conflict-of-interest rules sit in the Shareholders’ Agreement and are anchored on BCBCA sections 147 through 153.
03 Advisory board
Quarterly review against published gates
An of subject-matter experts in aquaculture, food safety, channel development, and BC regulation convenes quarterly. Advisors hold no voting rights and no fiduciary duty. Their role is to test progress against the gates the founding team has published and to call out where production or capital plan assumptions need revision.
04 Public gate tracking
Every gate visible on /roadmap
Every open gate — trademark clearance, mech-eng heat-load study, CFIA Form 5670 pre-clearance, DFO ITC §56 pre-clearance, MWR pre-application, Atarraya master licence, Phase 2 commit criteria — is published with an owner and a target close date on /roadmap. Slippage shows. Closure shows.
Talk with the founding team
Founder-led conversations, not a sales pipeline.
Investors, grant officers, restaurant buyers, distributors, and journalists are welcome to write directly. The founding team triages every message and responds within five business days. Conversations are confidential by default.