css to be 1 bill dollar company

http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,26424821-913,00.html

CLEAN Seas will become a $1 billion company provided it is up to the task confronting it in commercialising southern bluefin tuna production, founder Hagen Stehr says.

``A new seafood sector is in the making with world implications,'' Mr Stehr told an annual general meeting in Adelaide yesterday.

Clean Seas expects to produce tuna juveniles in December and place fingerlings about 4cm long into the sea for the first time early in the new year.

Clean Seas general manager hatcheries, Morton Deichmann, said that the breeding program was well under way.

The males were chasing the females, a lot of fish were involved and the company was only waiting for the females to begin spawning, which should happen by the end of the month, he said.

Clean Seas has targeted farmed tuna production of 10,000 tonnes annually by 2015.

Mr Stehr said that Time magazine's ranking of its success in breeding southern bluefin tuna as the second best invention of 2009, showed what food security meant to the rest of the world.

"If Clean Seas is to run second to anyone, it might as well be NASA,'' he said.
Mr Stehr said in his annual report that 2009 had been a transformational year in some areas, while it had underachieved in others.

"We are standing on the threshhold of an exciting future,'' he said. ``The best is yet to come.
Mr Stehr said Clean Seas had created a major seafood sector with massive possibilities and the promise of large rewards in future.

Clean Seas director Ian McLachlan paid tribute to Mr Stehr, who stepped down as chairman yesterday, for his invincible desire to ``somehow'' produce southern bluefin tuna.

Clean Seas also announced that managing director Marcus Stehr would become executive director of operations, while chief executive Clifford Ashby will become managing director.