Small is beautiful for budding Overberg trout business

Albert Kemp has turned a childhood fascination with fish into a sophisticated, year-round aquaculture enterprise on a smallholding owned by himself and his wife Alicia in Baardskeerdersbos near Gansbaai. He spoke to Jeanne van der Merwe.

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His mother knew he was going to be a trout farmer when he caught his first trout in a stream in Du Toitskloof as a four-year-old. Now, more than three decades later, Albert Kemp and his wife Alicia are running a successful and growing trout business in the Overberg from an unassuming smallholding – with clear plans for expanding.

The Kemps founded B-bos Trout nine years ago on their property in Baardskeerdersbos, about 20km from Gansbaai in the Western Cape. Albert, who grew up on a grain and cattle farm near Swellendam, had dabbled in fish farming as a child and then studied aquaculture at Stellenbosch University.

He has been a fish farmer since 2006. He worked on a fish farm on the Overberg coast, where his current business evolved out of his prior involvement with a commercial Norwegian salmon farm at Gansbaai.

“In the salmon business we were raising the fingerlings in a dam on a nearby farm, from where the salmon would be transferred into cages in the sea to finish growing,” Albert recalls.

When the salmon project proved to be unviable and closed down two years later, the Kemps stayed on at the same farm and started raising rainbow trout fingerlings in the dam and rearing them to adulthood to sell.

After a few years, they relocated the operation to Lomond Wine Estate, where they still run a part of their operation. Nine years ago the couple also established a permanent base for their business on their own smallholding in Baardskeerdersbos.

“We buy the fertilised trout ova from Lunsklip Fisheries in Mpumalanga, hatch them ourselves and grow them in our ponds on the farm, and at Lomond. We source the feed from Specialised Aquatic Feeds, which supplies the aquaculture industry and also manufactures pet food in Hermanus,” says Albert.