May/June 2010 - Global Aquaculture Alliance

Although Bowen had many business interests, his “crowning achievement” in aquaculture
was Belize Aquaculture Ltd.
Sir Barry Bowen: The Belizean
Who Changed Shrimp Farming
Robins McIntosh
Senior Vice President
Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Co.
C.P. Tower 27 Floor
313 Silom Road, Bangrak
Bangkok, 10500, Thailand
robmc101@yahoo.com
Not everyone has an opportunity to work
with a legend. As a past employee of Sir
Barry Bowen, I did.
On February 26, my old employer
and still friend Sir Barry Bowen died in a
plane he was piloting. Upon receiving
this news in Bangkok, my mind raced as
to what this man had meant to me personally
and then to what he had meant to
Belize and to the world community of
shrimp farmers.
Barry had so many times in the past
picked me up from the shrimp farm in his
modified Cessna 208 to take me to
Ambergris Caye for a weekend. A weekend
where he would discuss his dreams
and, more importantly, how to make those
dreams reality.
Barry Bowen had been flying planes
like most of us drive a car for 43 years.
He made that flight daily to his home in
Ambergris Caye. He was meticulous
about the plane’s maintenance, and every
time I entered the cockpit with him, he
would spend time going over his check
list before takeoff. He would arrive home
in the late afternoon, but always before
sunset. Barry was a risk taker, but he was
careful and always meticulous in everything
he did.
Belize First
Generally when one writes about
Barry Bowen, you begin by describing
him as one of the wealthiest individuals
in Belize – and that he was. But that simple
description does not give this man his
true merit.
He was first a Belizean, a man who
lived for his beloved Belize. He was a very
proud seventh-generation Belizean, and
always let me know that any investing he
did would always be in Belize.
Barry did not believe in paper assets.
He invested in hard assets, projects that
would be good for the Belizean economy.
And as he told me more than once: “I am
not a passive investor. I take an active
part in any investment I make.”
That is the Barry Bowen I remember
– the man who was ankle deep in a
muddy sump installing a seawater pump.
A man stooped over the hood of a truck
as the final layout of ponds was decided.
A man in the farm warehouse taking
apart a paddlewheel aerator so he could
Barry Bowen was knighted
by Queen Elizabeth
in 2008 for his many
contributions to Belize.
find ways to improve the gearing mechanism.
From Beer To Belize
Aquaculture
In the beginning, I must admit I was a
bit mystified by Barry, a dreamer and
visionary of the first order. Barry did
dream, but it was a calculated dreaming he
knew how to make a reality.
There was never a better person at
putting together a project from scratch
than Barry Bowen, especially projects
that others said just could not be done.
He enjoyed sitting me down and telling
me the story of Belikin Beer, for example.
After obtaining an engineering degree
from Cornell University, Barry returned
to Belize to work with his father in the
family-owned Coca-Cola bottling business.
For a dreamer and young man with
entrepreneurship in his veins, this would
not last long. He dreamed of a beer brewery
in Belize.
He asked his father to invest but was
quickly told, “Barry, Belize does not have
the population to support a brewery.” So
Barry took his life savings, a couple of
thousand dollars, to Miami and looked
up a retired German brewmaster living
there. Could the man develop a business
plan for a brewery in Belize?
Belize Aquaculture was a pioneer in the use of pond liners and regular aeration. The
shrimp farm’s sloped embankments were covered with fabric mesh sprigged with grass
to control erosion.
The brewmaster repeated Barry’s
father’s advice, but Barry insisted that
even though Belize had a small population
and one with the lowest beer consumption
in Central America, he could
make it work. He also told the brewmaster
he would give him his savings to help.
And so Barry Bowen got a business plan
for developing a brewery in Belize.
Then he figured he needed to learn
the business, and so off for the summer
went Barry to see a family friend who
owned Cerveceria Hondurena in Honduras.
He left for Honduras and volunteered
his work in the brewery to learn
more about beer.
After a couple of months, Barry scheduled
an appointment with the owner and
asked him if he would like to invest in a
brewery in Belize. As Barry would tell it,
the owner just about laughed him out of
the office. “I bet you don’t even have a
business plan,” the owner said. Barry
smiled and presented him with his business
plan. A bit shocked, the owner told
Barry to come back in a week after he
studied the document.
Upon his return, the owner told
Barry, “I will financially back your plan,
provided you promise that you will personally
work in this brewery business for
five years.” And with that, Barry Bowen
had found a backer and the technical support
for his first brewery.
It is said that Barry personally helped
lay the bricks for the foundation of the
Belikin Brewery, and as Barry was all too
proud to tell, “I turned a profit in my second
year, two years ahead of the plan.” In
not too long a period, Belize went from
last place in Central American beer consumption
to first place. And, of course,
that was not the end of the story.
With profits from the brewery, Barry
bought out his father’s shares in the
Coca-Cola bottling company, establishing
the cash flow that would fund his
future dreams. These included buying
Belize Estates, a company that held title
to over 400,000 ha of land or 20% of
Belize; the world-class jungle ecotourism
resort Chan Chich Resort on his Gallon
Jug Estate Lands; a livestock farm that
produced hybrid cattle with the best-tasting,
most tender beef in all of Central
America; a 1,200-ha organic coffee plantation;
the private Island Academy school
on Ambergris Caye; and what I consider
his crowning achievement, Belize Aquaculture
Ltd. (BAL).
Barry Bowen thought shrimp aquaculture
was good for Belize. He worried
about the citrus and banana industries
remaining competitive as the world
moved to a global economy. Shrimp, on
the other hand, was a high-value commodity
that Belize could cultivate competitively.
He envisioned being close to the
North American markets, providing
shrimp that were grown in “environmentally
friendly systems.” His greatest dream
was the delivery of newly harvested
shrimp by air directly from the farm to
Bowen’s Belize farm consistently produced
greater volumes of larger shrimp than were typical
of the time.
the major markets of the United States.
Breaking Rules
I first met Barry Bowen through Russ
Allen. I was not sold on working in
Belize. Before I went to meet Barry, an
owner of a major farm in Ecuador had
advised: “Don’t do it. Shrimp cannot be
cultured profitably in Belize. There are
no wild brooders or postlarvae there.”
With that in the back of my mind, I sat
down to talk with Barry Bowen, and we
had the conversation he loves to tell and
retell. This is my version of the story.
It was May 1996, and we were on a
porch outside his home on Ambergris
Caye, drinking, of course, Belikin Beer.
He told me he had studied the shrimp
business and was about to invest in it
back in 1992, when disease hit farms in
Central America. He decided there was
too much risk in the way shrimp were
being cultivated in large ponds using lots
of water exchange and wild shrimp. So he
studied some more.
After a visit to the Waddell Center in
South Carolina, USA, Barry decided that
the future was in smaller ponds using little
if any water exchange, closed systems
that would not pollute the waters outside
the farm and using domesticated shrimp
lines that were known to be free of any
diseases. Then he told me the goal of his
farm would be 11 mt/ha/crop with three
crops yearly.
I am sure I looked pretty stunned,
having come from Guatemala, where the
best I had ever accomplished was 7.7 mt/
ha in a couple of ponds. But in the end, I
was on board, and we were going to give
it the best try that technology would
allow – even if it meant breaking all the
rules of shrimp culture that were accepted
in 1996.
Barry made it clear he would invest
U.S. $10 million without losing any
6 May/June 2010 global aquaculture advocate global aquaculture advocate May/June 2010 7