MeterModern art on the wall, distinguished guests, pleasant conversation. That was three years ago. Since then, this lunchtime meeting of the German ambassador to Singapore has developed into a veritable fish farm, anchored near the coast of this Southeast Asian city-state. Siemens It is its largest investor, controlled by artificial intelligence. In a few years, it will be cloned frequently, and there will be at least one hundred such fish farms in Asia and America. Then the data should be the biggest gain for their German founders.
“It all started when the German ambassador to Singapore at the time invited a group of business people to lunch. Armin Bruck, the former regional head of Siemens, was urgently looking for a medium-sized company where Siemens could showcase its still young Industry 4.0 concept.” Co-founder Dirk Eichelberger explained. “Today, we use Siemens artificial intelligence to breed our fish.” The 57-year-old is standing on a pontoon over the equatorial sea, in front of ten huge blue Fieberg glass water tanks.He and his old friend Michael Waterman I don’t know where to raise their farm. “We are naive, we just tried, most of which we taught ourselves,” Voigtmann said.
A new beginning at sea
However, the two did not start from scratch in 2013.Both are experienced managers: Voigtmann, a German-Australian with a PhD in Chemistry and a PhD in Business Administration, once held management positions in the medium-sized plastics manufacturer Rehau, and later in Balda ag It changed, but it failed in the hands of financial juggler Lars Windhorst. “It will be tough when you go through a fire like that,” Eichelberg said.
Decades later, the two are looking for a new beginning. They discovered this in Asia, where they have been active for many years. “We quickly learned that fish is becoming more and more important as a source of protein,” Voigtmann said in an interview with FAZ. However, because water is polluted and faces immeasurable risks during climate change, raising fish in nets is not a solution. Therefore, they filled the first tank of Singapore Aquaculture Technology (SAT) with filtered seawater on an abandoned ship. “We have to reconsider breeding to reduce the huge risk of death of the entire baby bird,” Eichelberg said.
Facial recognition software leads success
A few days after lunch at the Ambassador’s residence, Siemens engineers visited a small farm along the coast. They shook their heads, then rolled up their sleeves. In order for medium-sized companies in Southeast Asia to accept their digital concepts, they need a demo object to pick coveted buyers they are familiar with: anyone who can use a sensor to control a fish farm and click a button can do the same. The factory that drives the car parts. Siemens soon used Singapore’s small farms as advertising objects for trade fairs.
