In his mid-40s, Irfan Thassim had a comfortable position as the CEO of a subsidiary of one of the largest and most admired companies in Sri Lanka. Thassim had been with his company – a major player in the country’s textile and apparel industry – for 20 years. While he worked hard, overall, life for Thassim was relatively easy.
That made Thassim uncomfortable.
“I was thinking, I’ve got a 15- to 20-year professional horizon left. Do I want to continue in the same fashion?”he said.“The answer was no.”
After many long talks with his wife, Thassim began looking around for something else to do.
“I looked at our resources in Sri Lanka, which is a tiny island of 65,000 square kilometers with 20 million people living on it. The largest resource that we have is the oceans. When I started looking into that, I realized there was a lot more that we can do with them,”he said.“But, it was completely new to me. I grew up in a little coastal town on the southern coast of Sri Lanka. We would literally play cricket and volleyball on the beach. I had a love for the oceans because I grew up on them, but doing business there was not something that I had [considered].”
As a first step, Thassim flew to England, where his sister was living. He had hopes of flying on to Norway, which he knew was an aquaculture hub, but he couldn’t afford the plane ticket. So, instead, he ended up in Scotland.
“I heard about Stirling University’s expertise in aquaculture, so I called them up and I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea to start a project in Sri Lanka,but I don’t know zilch about aquaculture. If I were to come by, can you do a rundown for me of what I need to know?’They told me to come on over, so I did. I spent half a day running through the entire history and the potential future for the aquaculture industry. Looking back, I call it my half-day MBA in aquaculture,”Thassim said.
The following day, Thassim began making cold calls to Scottish aquaculture companies, trying to arrange a meet-up with anyone willing. “Only one person returned my call, and that was [Kames Fish Farm Managing Director] Stuart Cannon. I ended up at his [farm] site the next morning, and he took me out on a boat; I got to see the first fish cage I had ever seen, and it was love at first sight,”Thassim said.“After that, Icouldn’t get it out of my head why an island like Sri Lanka, having such a vast oceanic resource around, had not ventured into this industry. My decision was made then and there that Sri Lanka’s going to get this.”
That was 2012. Five years later, Thassim had founded South Asia’s first barramundi farm and received his first lease for a site in Trincomalee, on Sri Lanka’s east coast.
Thassim chose to name his new company Oceanpick to render an image of a bountiful harvest and completed a four-cage pilot project that lasted through 2016. Then, Oceanpick ramped up to 20 cages and, in 2017, added a second site. At the same time, it worked with Sri Lanka’s government to create aquaculture regulations, which previously didn’t exist.
“There were no regulations because there was no history of marine aquaculture. Government officials would literally ask us how they should monitor us,”Thassim said.“I kind of realized early on that it was our responsibility to do it right – as a pioneer of this industry. We were setting the precedent for an entire industry, and we needed to be the benchmark.”
Oceanpick leaned heavily on the Scottish Environmental Protection Authority standards to help shape its own standards, as well as Sri Lanka’s as a whole. That involved lots of communication between Sri Lankan and Scottish officials and members of the industry.
“When I look back, I don’t know how we did it. Honestly, it’s puzzling to me years later,”Thassim said.“For somebody who didn’t know the industry as well, it was a lot of painstaking effort, learning, and staying patient with both our systems and the regulatory system.”
Thassim received help from Stuart Cannon and Kames Fish Farm, which had entered a joint venture with Oceanpick that involved the sale of equipment and the lending of a heavy dose of expertise.
“We really relied on Kames and all of the 50 years of experience they had because they were absolute pioneers of trout farming in Scotland,” Thassim said.“I didn’t let them just to sell me stuff and walk away. I convinced them to become a joint venture partner. I twisted their arm, and I said, ‘No, you have to take a stake in the business. You have to stay on my board, and you’ve got to kind of drive us through this.’”
Still, it wasn’t easy.
“Between 70 and 80 percent of my time was spent trying to avoid bankruptcy, trying to keep the lights on. Companies like ours need waiting time – and plentiful resources. You need resilience to continue. There are no shortcuts in this business. We had a lot of trial and error and things we experimented with and had to change,”he said.“All that is a key part of entrepreneurship. If the fundamentals are right, you can succeed.”
Right as Oceanpick was finding its stride (https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/aquaculture/sri-lankan-barramundi-going-global-as-demand-booms), Sri Lanka’s seafood industry was dealt a blow with the delivery of a European Union red card (https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environment sustainability/sri-lanka-edges-closer-to-having-eu-red-card-rescinded), which banne seafood trade shipments from Sri Lanka to the E.U. The ban was rescinded in 2016 (https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/environmentsustainability/european-commission-removes-red-card-from-sri-lanka-warns-others), but the incident gave Thassim a greater purpose in his work.
“It was only then I understood that Sri Lanka was grappling with IUU or being recognized as a country that was not compliant in many ways with global fisheries standards. Out of that, my own motivation kind of grew to showcase Sri Lanka as … offering a sustainable source of fish,”he said. “There is a lot of a lot of pride that I take in that this was a Sri Lankan initiative.”
Nevertheless, Oceanpick struggled for many years after it was founded. Fry imported from Australia was not growing well in its cages. By 2018, Thassim said he was“ready to throw the whole thing under the bus.”
“There was really nothing indicating that it would work,”he said
Then, good fortune struck Thassim again, when he made the acquaintance of Alain Michel.
“When we met him, we were at a very low point in our lives, thinking that we’ve started this project with a lot of ambition and a lot of hope but that it was all fizzling away. There was nothing that we could figure out to mitigate all the issues we were having, and as a startup, we had a finite amount of money we could work with, and it was vanishing faster than we would like,”Thassim said.“[Michel] was a gamechanger – a real hero for us. He came along and worked with us to set up a hatchery, set up some tanks, and get some broodstock. By 2020, we started to see very good results from the hatchery. In the meantime, he set up all our protocols that reversed the trend of mortalities we were having.”
“When we met him, we were at a very low point in our lives, thinking that we’ve started this project with a lot of ambition and a lot of hope but that it was all fizzling away. There was nothing that we could figure out to mitigate all the issues we were having, and as a startup, we had a finite amount of money we could work with, and it was vanishing faster than we would like,”Thassim said.“[Michel] was a gamechanger – a real hero for us. He came along and worked with us to set up a hatchery, set up some tanks, and get some broodstock. By 2020, we started to see very good results from the hatchery. In the meantime, he set up all our protocols that reversed the trend of mortalities we were having.”
After Michel died in July 2022, Oceanpick named its hatchery after him (https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/aquaculture/oceanpick-to-rename-fish-farm-alain-michel-hatchery). Thassim said his legacy also lives on through the education he provided to the company’s 100
employees.
“In the beginning, we struggled a lot with personnel. Alain was a guru. He trained all our people. He was able just to sit with the team and take a piece of paper and say, ‘Look, guys, this is how we should do it,’”he said.“Now, there are 100 people living in a rural part of Sri Lanka, earning an income from operation. That is a beautiful thing.”
While Michel was key to solving Oceanpick’s production issues, Thassim, a natural salesman and the company’s self-appointed CMO, said the
barramundi Oceanpick produces has always sold itself.
“We always got fabulous reviews for our product – maybe to do with the fact that Trincomalee is very pristine in a fantastic location, and the taste profile, the texture, and the appearance of our barramundi always got very good feedback all over the world,”he said.“What took us some time was getting people to associate Sri Lanka with barramundi as a country of origin. We have proved we can produce a world-class barramundi on par with the best in the world – if not better. Now, we have a lot easier passage into any market, and we have great customer partners across the world. They are few, but they’re extremely special to us. We’re joined at the hip.”
Oceanpick sought out Best Aquaculture Practices certification in 2018 and attained it in 2019; Thassim said that credential allows him to“get in the door”of certain potential customers. It also helped the company set higher standards for itself, he said.
“It brought a lot of discipline to the team. It forced us to have the conversation amongst ourselves of, ‘What will we really be doing when no one’s watching us?’”he said.“It got 100 people to live the mentality of doing the right thing at all times.
Today, Oceanpick sells around 10 to 15 percent of its 1,000 metric tons (MT) of annual production domestically, and exports comprise the remainder. Thassim said the company plans to ramp up to 1,500 MT in 2024 and eclipse 3,000 MT in 2025.
“We have a lot of space where we can add more cages in a very safe manner, and we will do that as time goes on. We won’t get ahead of ourselves in terms of trying to rush things, but we are ready now to really do a quantum leap here,”Thassim said.“We are in a hub of 1.5 billion people in our region, so there is a lot of scope for where we are located and the markets near that. It is a matter of time before these markets get more mature. In fact, they are already evolving right now, and we want to be a catalyst in that maturation process.”
Thassim said the world“deserves to know more about barramundi.”He said the U.S. market is in a better state than Europe regarding its baseline awareness of the species but said there is“still a long way to go.
“I look at it as upside potential. We will continue to try and globalize the species both in the U.S. and E.U. while we build the Asian market,”he said.“It’s a species that really stands out in the whitefish marketplace, and we want to do it justice.”
Thassim said he’s“very bullish” about the future of his company and of the potential of the market for barramundi.
“We are in it for the long haul,”he said.“We are very motivated to put Sri Lanka on the global map and present a positive Sri Lankan story on a global scale.”
Sri Lanka is resilient and has a “fabulous outlook on life, and Oceanpick is both powered by that force and driven to deliver for it,” according to Thassim.
“You can throw any number of punches at Sri Lanka, and Sri Lanka will rise. We had a 30-year civil conflict. We had the 2004 tsunami and the Easter attacks in 2019 … then Covid and the 2022 economic crisis (https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/turmoil-in-sri-lanka-not-hindering-taprobane-seafoods). That’s a hell of a lot to take. But, the people are resilient and able to say, ‘Tomorrow morning, let’s wake up and rebuild again,’”he said.“At Oceanpick, we want to really build something for the country. We really want to give something back to the nation.”
Traditionally, Sri Lanka’s economy has relied on tea, rubber, coconut, tourism, and apparel. Thassim said he wants to learn from those five pillars and create a sixth in the form of fisheries and aquaculture.
“We want to make sure Sri Lanka never goes back into an economic crisis,”he said.“That vertical could mean we produce 10,000 MT or 100,000 MT; I don’t know yet. It’s basically leveraging all the knowledge that we have and try and build up a new leg for Sri Lanka’s economy to stand on, doing all of it while producing and offering a great species. We have a sense of urgency now to try and really take this to another level and become a dominant player in the space of barramundi on a global scale. Now, we are out there, and there is no looking back.”
As for Thassim himself, his transformation is near complete.
“I sat in a board room and presented quarterly results for 20 years, and it was comfortable and relatively easy. To dump that for something that is as risky as this was not an easy call. Over time, that life became not as meaningful as it was when I started out. I’m sure it happens to many of us, getting boxed in our thoughts, governed and even restricted in life by perceived limitations,”he said.“For this chapter of my life, the guiding factor was not mere profit, which is the usual startup dream, but to do something more meaningful. I believed if you do right by the environment and social standpoints, profit will be both a natural phenomenon and sustainable. I want Oceanpick to leave a legacy that lasts beyond my lifetime – a 100-year legacy and something that positively impacts many people for many generations to come. This is also why we dream to become a major blue economy contributor with a strong ESG focus central to everything we do. That’s my dream now.”