Merck aquaculture executive Beattie joins AKVA
Experienced aquaculture executive Chris Beattie has joined industry supplier AKVA Group as regional business director North America and Australasia, starting next month.
Beattie has spent more than two decades in aquaculture, starting as a field technical advisor with feed producer Skretting in Scotland in 1999.
He relocated to Canada in 2005, moving through the ranks to become general manager for Skretting North America in 2010.
Machine-learning solutions
Beattie joined pharmaceutical giant Merck Animal Health as head of global aquaculture in 2015, developing and managing the marketing and technical service activities of Merck’s aquaculture portfolio of vaccines, anti-infectives and parasiticides, including the in-feed sea lice treatment SLICE.
Most recently, he has led Merck Animal Health’s Precision Aquaculture Team, developing computer vision-based machine-learning solutions for aquaculture producers – an area also being looked at by AKVA.
Beattie, from the north-east of England, has a first degree in Marine and Freshwater Biology from the University of Glasgow, and a Doctorate in Fish Physiology from the University of St Andrews.
Genome BC
A former board member of the BC (British Columbia) Salmon Farmers’ Association and the Canadian Aquaculture Alliance, Beattie currently sits on the Fisheries and Aquaculture Strategic Advisory Council of Genome BC and volunteers as a business mentor at the University of British Columbia. He will be based in Vancouver, BC.
“We’re very excited to have somebody with Chris’s knowledge and experience joining the AKVA group team and wish him every success in his new role,” said Andrew Campbell, AKVA’s chief operating officer (international).
