Who

partners in professional aquaponics

Aquaponics Professionals is a consortium of professionals in aquaponics.

We believe in the concept of a strong network of individual companies with practical experience in aquaponics.
The aim is to offer customers the best local support in the whole process of creating and maintaining aquaponics farms.
Every person or company has its own specialty, such as strong technical skills, specific knowledge of aquaculture, social integration, money flows, science, etc.

If you are interested to join our partnership, please contact us via the below form.

The core team and founders of the European Aquaponics Consortium:

Smart Farmers, Gent Belgium

Smart Farmers was founded in 2015 by Pascal De Bondt. His ambition was producing food in rural areas combining the best of nature and technology.
With the kick-off project ‘the Urban Smart Farm” Smart Farmers won the Ghent Innovation Award for Short Chain food production. This unique container farm combines aquaponics and LED-farming:  crops are tilapia, shrimp, leafy greens and microgreens.
In 2016 Belgian’s first urban commercial aquaponics farm was awarded by the Innovation Support Centre for Agricultural development.
In 2017 project ‘Schoolvis’ combined growing strawberries and trout in a vertical greenhouse farm.
Smart Farmers has expertise in Urban Farming, Vertical Farming, coupled and decoupled aquaponics under LED and natural light.
Business skills are project management, feasiblity studies, social impact and (project) funding

– link to Smart Farmers website –


Blue Acres Aquaponics, Eindhoven The Netherlands

Blue Acres aquaponics was the first professional aquaponics company in The Netherlands.
In the capable hands of Jos Hakkennes, the Holland team realised several projects:
Starting in Vortum-Mullem (2014), an old greenhouse was transformad to a professional aquaponics installation, growing trout & catfish combined with salads (floating rafts), herbs (vertical towers) and a variety of vegetables and edible flowers in grow beds.
In 2016, Blue Acres realised the project ‘Stichting Duurzame Kost’ in Eindhoven: An old floor of the former Phillips building was transformed to a Aquaponics LED farm, with a 400kg indoor trout farm and 650m² of floating rafts. Vegetables and fish are sold in local restaurants.
Blue Acres specialises also in vocational rehabilitation: the re-integration of young people with social problems.
With tons of experience and a hands-on approach, Blue Acres is a great partner providing consultancy, material sales, design & development of professional production systems, installations and support of all types of systems (backyard, semi-industrial and industrial) and marketing strategies.

– link to Blue Acres website –


Vasch Aquaponics, Beerlegem Belgium

Vasch aquaponics, founded by Valentijn Schepens, is one of the pioneers of aquaponics in Belgium & The Netherlands.
Vasch has practical experience since 2007 in all kind of systems and a strong drive for networking with aquaponics professionals and amateures all over Europe. With strong technical skills, hundreds of persons were supported with the development of their systems in the last years.
Vasch created the Dutch Aquaponics Forum in 2010 and his website has lots of info for every aquaponics lover.
He also started the aquaponics webshop, a specialised shop for aquaponics materials, in cooperation with EU partners.
Valentijn was involved in the development of Aqua4C, the most sustainable fish farm in the world, where 200 tons of Omega perch are produced every year. He works part time in the farm as Operations manager. This gives him a huge knowledge of aquaculture engineering and practical experience.
He also has his own artisanal fish farm where rainbow trout fingerlings are grown for aquaponics.
Vasch specializes in the support of other Aquaponics Professional Partners towards material supply, development & design, engineering and supply of fish.


The European Aquaponics Consortium also works with other satellite partners for the realisation of projects.

For the completion of our projects, we often work together with third party partners. The consortium also keeps its relationships warm with other networks and aquaponics related institutions.

European Aquaponics Consortium is always looking for more partners

To be able to support companies that want to work with, or integrate, aquaponics systems, the European Aquaponics Consortium needs more partners in all European countries.
Are you a company or organisation that wants to support this growing market, and are you willing to work with us in a open and trustworthy relationship?
Please contact us via the below form.