The National Broodstock Centre for marine tilapia aims to produce its first batch of selectively bred fish by early 2026 for local farms to purchase. The six-month-old centre – located at Max Koi Farm in Lim Chu Kang – is managed by Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation (Safef) and funded by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).
New centre in Singapore will breed high-quality tilapia for sustainable fish farms
Shabana Begum Straits Times May 21, 2025, 12:37 AM
SINGAPORE – The high rate of fish mortality in local farms is a major pain point for the Republic’s flagging aquaculture sector.
To address this, a farming coalition has started a new centre with the purpose of breeding high-quality baby tilapia fish.
On May 20, Mr Ken Cheong, chief executive of the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation (Safef), said the National Broodstock Centre for marine tilapia aims to produce its first batch of selectively bred young fish by early 2026 for local farms to purchase.
The six-month-old centre – located at Max Koi Farm in Lim Chu Kang – is managed by Safef and funded by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA).
The aim is for the baby tilapia produced to have desirable traits such as reddish-golden skin, immunity to disease and the ability to grow up to a kilogram in weight.
Having high-quality eggs and baby fish is crucial for viable aquaculture production. Currently, Singapore’s fish farms depend on overseas fingerlings, which come in inconsistent quality and may have undergone stress from the long journey, reducing their survival rate, said Mr Cheong.
Senior Minister of State for Sustainability and the Environment Koh Poh Koon has said in Parliament that fish mortalities here can reach 80 per cent due to inconsistent quality of eggs and fingerlings.
Safef also leads a farming coalition called The Straits Fish, which comprises five tilapia farms in the Johor Strait and hatcheries.
This team in 2023 pioneered the push to farm saltwater tilapia using sustainable methods that do not harm the marine environment. These include using pelleted fish food instead of expired bread to feed fish.
The baby tilapia produced by the centre will be sold only to farms that join The Straits Fish or adhere to sustainable farming practices, said Mr Cheong. This is part of Safef’s push to raise farming standards in the Johor Strait, which has 74 open-cage farms as at October 2024. The Straits Fish players include Heng Heng Fish Farm, Millenia Farm and a hatchery called Century Aquaculture.
Tilapia is also known as the “chicken of the sea” because it is easy to farm and takes between six and eight months to reach selling size. Asian sea bass, on the other hand, takes up to 1½ years to grow and can be double the price of tilapia. A 200g pack of tilapia fillets under The Straits Fish brand costs $6.90 on FairPrice’s website.
The National Broodstock Centre for tilapia is one of two facilities under Singapore’s Aquaculture Plan to overhaul the Republic’s aquaculture sector. The other broodstock centre is in the SFA-run Marine Aquaculture Centre on St John’s Island, which has been running an Asian sea bass breeding programme for years.
At the two-storey centre that Safef revealed to the media on May 20, several tanks are filled with 2,500 juvenile tilapia each – the offspring of tilapia sourced from local farms.
Some of the more fast-growing juveniles that have other desirable traits will be selected to form the first generation of brooder fish. Brooders are mature fish kept for breeding purposes.
Most of their offspring will be sent to the Century Aquaculture hatchery nearby, and their subsequent spawn will be sold to The Straits Fish farms in early 2026, to grow them to maturity.
The rest of the offspring will become the next generation of brooders at the centre, as it takes several breeding cycles to produce the high-quality fish the broodstock centre is aiming for.
Mr Cheong has also sourced baby tilapia from breeding programmes abroad to improve the quality of future offspring.
Eventually, the centre will also employ the help of university researchers who can further study the fish’s genes to identify superior individuals.
One issue Mr Cheong hopes to tackle through research is the growth of the rarer red tilapia. Currently, red tilapia can grow only up to 700g, which is not meaty enough for filleting and for selling to restaurants. Faster growth means better revenue, said Mr Cheong, who added: “A reduction of one month in the growth cycle is a 12 per cent increase in revenue.”
Seawater tilapia is unlike freshwater tilapia, which is grown in ponds and may have an unappealing muddy taste. Marine tilapia has a cleaner, light flavour. The Straits Times tried two locally farmed tilapia dishes – fried and in a curry – at Keng Eng Kee Seafood restaurant in Tampines on May 20.
Tilapia under The Straits Fish brand is sold in eight FairPrice outlets, at Qian Hu Fish Farm, at the three Keng Eng Kee Seafood restaurants, as well as online on RedMart. Currently, the five farms harvest 600kg of tilapia each week.
According to the SFA’s 2023 food statistics, local aquaculture farms produced 7.3 per cent of seafood consumed in 2023. Singapore has a target to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs locally by 2030.
But in 2023, local vegetable and seafood production fell.
In October 2024, The Straits Times reported that the number of sea-based fish farms here had dropped to 74, from 98 in 2023, as fish farmers exited the industry due to higher costs of using sea space, among other reasons.
Mr Cheong said reaching the 30 per cent goal is more important, and the deadline to meet it is secondary. He hopes to see dishes using at least a third of locally sourced ingredients in the near future.
“Fulfilling the first 30 per cent is something we cannot let go. On when, it can even happen in 2035,” said Mr Cheong.
Dr Koh told Parliament in March that Singapore is reviewing its 30 by 30 goal for local production “to be more focused and targeted in addressing key challenges of productivity, costs and demand, and in fostering the sector’s continued growth”.
Besides aspiring towards 30 per cent self-sufficiency, Mr Cheong noted that two more things need to be fulfilled to meet the goal: building the capacity to grow more food – which Singapore is working on – and replacing a portion of the market with local entrants.
Tilapia’s responsible revolution: Swimming towards a more sustainable and profitable future
Ariel Yu Straits Times Feb 15, 2024, 05:00 AM
SINGAPORE – Two more fish farms have joined pioneer Heng Heng Fish Farm in producing marine tilapia, a hardy and fast-growing food fish.
By using more sustainable farming methods such as food pellets, which are less polluting than expired bread, and by farming the fish in salt water instead of fresh water, Millenia Farm and Grand Pacific Fishery hope to make tilapia – often shunned by consumers because of its “muddy” taste – a more palatable choice.
Indeed, when The Straits Times tried the four marine tilapia dishes cooked by a foodcourt stall in Yew Tee Square, the textural contrast between the marine tilapia’s firm bite and its delicate sweetness and its freshwater counterpart was evident.
The farms are part of a national effort to transform Singapore’s aquaculture sector into one that is productive, climate-resilient and resource-efficient, with the Government working with industry players to find innovative ways to grow more with less.
Tilapia, for instance, takes up to seven months to grow and costs less than half the price of barramundi (Asian sea bass), which takes 1½ years.
The three farms – the first to join the Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation (Safef) – are adopting more sustainable practices set out in the Good Aquaculture Practice for Fish Farming (GAP-FF). This is a set of guidelines established by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) to ensure safe and quality fish farming.
Safef has been trying to raise the productivity and farming standards of coastal fish farms, as well reducing the environmental impact of these farms along the Johor Strait, which makes up the majority of aquaculture farms here.
For Mr Ken Cheong, who took over as chief executive officer of Safef in mid-2023, his priority has been to ensure the business viability of farms in the Johor Strait.
One of the first things Safef had to do was to ensure that all three farms that had joined the federation switch to pellet food. Expired bread and baked goods, which are cheaper than protein-rich pellets, are often fed to fish but pollute the saltwater environment and lower oxygen levels, which makes the environment unhealthier for fish.
Heng Heng Fish Farm’s owner, Mr Yeo King Kwee, switched fully to pellets in November 2023. While this costs more, Mr Yeo, 63, said marine tilapia grows faster when fed pellets.
He estimates that his farm can produce up to 350 tonnes of marine tilapia per year by end-2024, as compared with 180 to 200 tonnes per year before he had fully switched to pelleted feed.
Singapore’s goal is to produce at least 30 per cent of its food needs locally by 2030. According to SFA, it produces 7.6 per cent of seafood, amounting to about four thousand tonnes as at 2022.
Millenia Farm and Grand Pacific Fishery started rearing marine tilapia in June 2023.
“We cannot wait any longer! Let’s start farming marine tilapia,” fish farmer Heng Chun Kwang, 61, told his business partner, Mr Mak Wah Weng, 60, in Mandarin when he heard that local tilapia – generally bred in fresh water, can be acclimated to salt water in West Johor Strait – so it does not have any muddy taste.
They are directors of Millenia Farm.
Millenia Farm is currently producing one to two tonnes of tilapia a month. It is hoping to ramp up and produce 50 tonnes of tilapia a year by end-2024 and 100 tonnes of tilapia a year by end-2025.
Mr Phillip Nien, director of Grand Pacific Fishery, estimates that he will be able to produce 15 tonnes of tilapia per month, starting August 2024.
Mr Nien, 62, who currently has four saltwater tilapia ponds in Lim Chu Kang, intends to convert two more ponds for the fish.
Safef’s Mr Cheong meets the owners regularly to coordinate and plan the production and supply of tilapia from the three farms.
Safef sends the tilapia feed to a local food testing lab to test for safety and basic nutrition levels. At the same time, Safef staff help the farmers to conduct record-keeping of important data such as amounts of tilapia stocks, amounts of dispensed feed and the mortality rate.
This data is sent to scientists and researchers at Temasek Polytechnic’s Aquaculture Innovation Centre (AIC). AIC has been conducting feeding trials for marine tilapia in land-based tanks since October 2023.
They are drafting a tilapia farming protocol that will set standards for proper husbandry and feeding practices, fingerlings, fish health and water quality in coastal farms, said the centre.
The three farms produce tilapia under the brand The Straits Fish, which is processed by distributor Hai Sia Seafood, and cooked by food service provider Chang Cheng Holdings.
Chang Cheng hopes to add value to the marine tilapia by developing new flavours that highlight its firm texture and mildly sweet taste.
Its food court stall, Ming Kitchen Seafood, is launching four new tilapia dishes on Feb 17 – steamed Hong Kong style, deep fried, steamed with soya bean paste and assam tilapia.
“We came together with a consensus to value-add to the marine tilapia in order to make it comparable to other fishes, so that we have the room to compete,” said Chang Cheng’s spokesman.
Raising standards of coastal fish farms in S’pore with tilapia, the ‘chicken of the sea’
Shabana Begum Straits Times Nov 14, 2024, 10:08 AM
SINGAPORE – In the 1990s, fish farmer Yeo King Kwee would take his three children around the island to catch tilapia in longkangs (drains). The family’s catch did not become fried fish for dinner. Not yet, at least.
Mr Yeo would take the fish – which come in orange-pink, white and black – to his farm off Lim Chu Kang and let them breed in the waters of the West Johor Strait.
Around 2000, the self-taught farmer, now 62, took some courses on fish spawning, selective breeding and genetics by the then Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore.
He learnt to identify fast-growing and meatier fishes, which he describes as “small head, big body”, to use as breeding fish.
Over many years, he bred the fish until he had strong shoals of hatched tilapia and juvenile fish in his at-sea nursery.
But during the early years, many of the juvenile fish died because they could not adapt to the sea’s higher salinity, said his older son Alvin Yeo, 34.
Wild tilapia also tend to be aggressive, and it took a while for the fish to grow together in an enclosed area.
It took around 30 years for the older Mr Yeo to perfect his breeding technique, and it was only five to six years ago that Heng Heng Fish Farm started selling tilapia on a larger scale, his son added.
The half-hectare fish farm has tens of thousands of tilapia in net cages, and Mr Yeo can harvest up to 30 tonnes of tilapia every year.
At his humble farm, Mr Yeo is among a small number of traditional fish farmers here who can rear fish from spawn to harvest.
Fish hatcheries and nurseries are often associated with fancy facilities and high-tech equipment on land, which need the investment of large sums of money. Baby fish are sheltered in recirculating tanks. Most of the roughly 100 traditional farms across the Johor Strait import juvenile fish from abroad and grow them in their farms.
When Singapore Agro-Food Enterprises Federation’s (Safef) chief executive Ken Cheong visited Heng Heng Fish Farm earlier in 2023, he was impressed by the school of 2cm-long newly hatched tilapia thriving in the waters.
Mr Cheong is on a mission to raise the business viability and standards of traditional open cage farms in the Johor Strait, and he sees marine tilapia as a promising species to start with.
“Tilapia is the chicken of the sea. It is hardy, easy to farm and takes between six and eight months to reach selling size,” he noted.
The more familiar barramundi (Asian sea bass) takes 1½ years to grow and tilapia can be less than half the price of the sea bass, he added.
The Republic’s nascent aquaculture sector accounts for 7.6 per cent of seafood consumed in the country in 2022.
Farms that are more productive and technology-driven, which contribute to the bulk of the nation’s aquaculture, are in the minority.
Safef is currently building a marine tilapia brand called The Straits Fish with some partners.
They include a few tilapia-growing farms such as Heng Heng and Opal Resources hatchery, Temasek Polytechnic’s (TP) Aquaculture Innovation Centre and a group comprising a fish feed producer, seafood processors, manufacturers and distributors.
The Straits Fish brand will help to distinguish locally grown tilapia from imported freshwater tilapia.
It is difficult to compete with the lower prices of imported tilapia at Jurong Fishery Port or wet markets, said Mr Cheong.
But current and future tilapia farms under The Straits Fish will need to adopt progressive and environmentally friendly farming practices, he added.
Mr Cheong said Safef aims to help raise the standards of traditional fish farms here.
Enter TP’s Aquaculture Innovation Centre, which is helping to draft a tilapia farming protocol that will set standards for proper husbandry and feeding practices, fingerlings, fish health and water quality.
The centre’s director, Dr Lee Chee Wee, is hoping to get the protocol drafted by the first quarter of 2024 at the earliest, and accredited to ensure quality and standards.
At several farms, fish are often fed with expired bread and confectionery, which are cheaper than protein-rich pellets.
But excess food pollutes the seabed and leads to nutrient build-up in the water, causing lower oxygen levels and increased risk of harmful algal blooms.
Mr Yeo switched to pelleted feed a few years ago.
This week, the Aquaculture Innovation Centre will also conduct feeding trials with Heng Heng’s tilapia to find out how much and what types of pelleted feed are needed for the optimal growth of the fish.
Fish feed can contribute up to 70 per cent of a farm’s production cost.
Dr Lee added: “A cost-effective feeding regime, stable and predictable prices of their harvests and high productivity of quality tilapia can be very attractive to local farmers.”
Under The Straits Fish brand – for which Safef has submitted a trademark application – Heng Heng is starting to expand from doing business with wet markets and fishery ports to working with food manufacturers and retailers to “dress up” its tilapia and raise fish sales.
At recent farmers’ markets, the Chang Cheng Group served grilled tilapia dishes with Japanese kabayaki sauce and sambal, in the style of sambal stingray. Seafood retailer Seaco is looking to process the tilapia and promote the fish to restaurants and customers.
Many Singaporeans are familiar with freshwater tilapia, which are grown in ponds and have an unappealing muddy taste because of cyanobacteria accumulating in the enclosed water, said Mr Yeo.
Most of the tilapia from Malaysia, Vietnam and China are freshwater ones. But marine tilapia grown in the open waters will not have that muddy taste, Mr Yeo said.
His son Alvin added: “Tilapia’s flavour comes from the water’s taste… This also boils down to why we need to protect the water quality here.”
