ince establishment in 2020, through the COVID lockdowns and restrictions, AquaLekker established itself as one of the larges producers of fancy leave lettuce in Namibia. AquaLekker’s existing client base includes retail stores, restaurants and hotels in Windhoek, Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Henties bay, Otjiwarongo and Grootfontein that take off all available production, every week. The mix of clients, domestic households, hotels, and restaurants, ensure that AquaLekker has a consistent demand for produce. On numerous occasions AquaLekker could not supply all the orders due to production shortages. 

Existing Production Capacity, the Supply

Lettuce is presently producing an array of Deep-Water Channels, which make part of two aquaponic systems, that run independently from each other as to minimize risks. The Table below provide insight into the available aquaponics infrastructure.

1.   A total of six channels with a total of 9,270 GPs are currently in operation.

2.   From seedling to harvestable Lettuce take seven weeks in the channels. This can be improved to as low as five weeks.

3.   Informed by the time in system and number of GPs a total of 64,890 fancy leaf lettuce can be produced per year.

4.   This inform that a total 1,248 lettuce are produced per week.

5.   Statistic has shown that due to environmental factors, poor seed quality, 15% losses are suffered during the year.

Thus a production capacity of 1,081 lettuce per week.