River Stone Aquaculture Innovations

Smart50 Sustainability Award winner

There’s no business more deserving of our Smart50 Sustainability Award than this year’s winner, River Stone Aquaculture Innovations.

Back when founder and genetics engineer Joseph Ayoub set up a small barramundi fish farm in 2007, he couldn’t have foreseen the path his entrepreneurialism would take. At the time he only had one goal in mind: to produce sustainable barramundi crops free from all contaminants.

“My goal was to remove the toxins and heavy metals typically found in farmed barramundi, but I realised the mercury levels were still too high,” Ayoub says. “After tracking this down to the use of commercial fish feed from unsustainable sources, I developed my own fish feed sourced from sustainable, clean and organic inputs, which achieved zero toxic metal content.”

That idea turned into years of research and development eventually spawning Swift Grow, the only organic solution that restores depleted natural soil microbiology, achieves optimum crop yield, and ticks all the economic and environmental benefits.

With a laser focus and sharp business acumen, Ayoub believes the solution “can help reverse global warming”. Furthermore, his developed fertiliser has a bacterium that helps restore the global bee population by attracting more bees and restoring their immunity to lethal pathogens.

River Stone Aquaculture Innovations is all about sustainable, carbon-neutral products that restore plant and soil activity to create an increase in crop yield that also results in healthier produce.

Ayoub and his team have a never-ending goal to rejuvenate the environment by providing a sustainable fertiliser alternative that supports soil growth. They have also started a global initiative known as Save My Earth, which sponsors mass-scale application of Swift Grow on farmland and government land to restore soil microbiota, which in turn accelerates the absorption of greenhouse gases.