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Denise Tsang

Mark Kwok Chi-yat has proved a retailer can be a fisherman.
Kwok, an executive director of the century-old department store operator Wing On, has ploughed HK$20 million into an indoor fish farm in the New Territories.
The farm is a ground-breaking project, just like his grandparents' decision more than a century ago to found the tiny Wing On store on Queen's Road in Central.
Tucked into the fresh oyster district of Lau Fau Shan, in Yuen Long, the 30,000 square foot fish farm each year raises tens of thousands of giant groupers destined for dining tables in hotels, restaurants and homes.
"The fish farm business is retailing of a different kind," said Kwok, a director and controlling shareholder of the fish farm venture, Aquaculture Technologies Asia. "We are raising fish in ways that have never done before."
At the family-run Wing On, Kwok is responsible for overseas investments, while his brothers take charge of daily operations.
Giant groupers, a delicacy in Chinese culture, are the largest in size and have the highest prices in the grouper family. Their thick, chewy skin contains collagen and is as nutritious as salmon.
Kwok, 58, a scuba diver with a strong passion for spear fishing for more than 40 years, was prompted to turn to running a sustainable aquaculture business partly because of the worsening water quality around Hong Kong.
He and his long-time diving friend Patrick Chan, a retired police chief inspector who is now a minority shareholder and operator of the fish farm project, saw for themselves how Hong Kong's waters have deteriorated over the past decades. In the 1970s, Kwok says, the water quality at Shek O was like that of the Maldives.
"We call the fishes we raise Oasis Giant," said Kwok, pointing to the school of 75-centimetre long, greyish spotted giant groupers in the fish tanks. "They are fishes living on the land inside our system, which is like people travelling in the desert and finding an oasis."
It was in 2006 when Kwok turned his interest in "anything to do with the sea" into a business by setting up a commercially run indoor fish farm in Mai Po, the natural reserve in Yuen Long, and then in September 2011 in Lau Fau Shan. The Lau Fau Shan project cost HK$20 million to develop.
Kwok imported giant grouper fingerlings from Taiwan, and fed them with meal powder imported from Denmark and Latin America. Aquaculture joined forces with the Kadoorie Agricultural Research Centre at the University of Hong Kong, which helped develop technologies and make the business sustainable.
"It is a pilot project. If it's financially sustainable at the target date, we will replicate it across the border," Kwok said.
Choosing giant groupers as the core product makes business sense, since they fetch the highest prices and grow at the most rapid rate. From a fingerling to a foot-long, 1.2 kilogram giant grouper takes about 12 to 18 months, Kwok said. The fish's size can double in the following year, which means it takes about five years to grow a 75cm, 40 kg giant grouper.
A fingerling costs about HK$20 to HK$30, but that fish can be sold for HK$600 in 12 to 18 months, when it grows to 1.2kg. A wild giant grouper of similar size would sell for about HK$500.
Growing the fish indoor means making the unpredictable predictable and the impossible possible, Kwok said. "The ways we run the fish farm mean that we can deliver 100, 200, 300, 400 almost identical fishes at any given time with similar taste and texture. We even have forward contracts for six to nine months in advance, which lock up selling prices and avoid price volatility."
Located on the shore of Deep Bay, the fish farm is like a different planet. The water the giant groupers live in is tap water with added salt, the tank they live is as shallow as their natural habitat.
A mechanical system stirring strong currents through the fish tanks, forces the fish to be in constant motion, like salmon swimming upstream.
"We know the history of each fish, but do you know what a wild sea fish eats and where it came from?" Kwok said. "The mortality rate of indoor fish farming is pretty low, at 10 per cent, compared with 50 per cent of those kept in floating pontoons." The indoor fish farm is unlike traditional "sea-cage" fish farmers, who are vulnerable to uncontrollable factors such as pollution, red tides, typhoons and even radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster in Japan.
Despite its sustainable nature, Kwok concedes that the fish farm has to sell between 60,000 and 100,000 giant groupers a year to break even. Its inventory stands at about 30,000 fishes, and the business is expected to take three years to meet its target.
Kwok has to overcome teething problems with high rental charges and big electricity bills, which combined account for about 30 per cent of total costs. "Consumers generally tend to believe wild fishes taste better and are more valuable, a belief that our giant groupers may be able to reverse," Kwok said.
The fish farm project is accredited by the World Wildlife Fund as a sustainable product. But what will the maker of heaven and earth say about it?


Fresh farmed fish on tap

Retailer and fisherman Mark Kwok with one of the thousands of giant groupers at his fish farm in Lau Fau Shan. Photo: Felix Wong

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Mark Kwok is raising thousands of giant groupers in tanks of salted tap water on the shores of Deep Bay to feed hungry gourmets


Mark Kwok Chi-yat has proved a retailer can be a fisherman. Kwok, an executive director of the century-old department store operator Wing On, has ploughed HK$20 million into an indoor fish farm in the New Territories.


Fresh farmed fish on tap

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Mark Kwok is raising thousands of giant groupers in tanks of salted tap water on the shores of Deep Bay to feed hungry gourmets

Mark Kwok is raising thousands of giant groupers in tanks of salted tap water on the shores of Deep Bay to feed hungry gourmets