Case Study: University of Tasmania achieves robust financial risk assessment for salmon farming expansion with Palisade @RISK

University of Tasmania - Customer Case Study

The University of Tasmania faced the challenge of evaluating financial risk as Tasmania’s Atlantic salmon industry looked to double capacity using alternative production technologies (offshore, partial land-based RAS, and full land-based growout). To move beyond single-point deterministic analysis the researchers used Palisade’s @RISK to assess investment strategies and quantify uncertainty across biological, capital and operating inputs for 15-year production scenarios.

Using Palisade’s @RISK the team built linked stochastic models (biological performance, capital and operational costs) sampling with Latin‑Hypercube and 25,000 iterations to achieve robust convergence. The analysis produced measurable outputs—unit cost of production, US$/kg, third‑year income, ROI and 15‑year NPV—with results showing offshore expansion had the lowest initial investment and highest expected returns while land‑based systems carried greater financial uncertainty; 15‑year NPVs ranged from about US$50.3M (P5) to US$150.2M (P95), a spread of roughly US$100M. Palisade’s @RISK increased confidence in the forecasts and helped identify the inputs with the largest effect on project economics.

University of Tasmania

Catriona MacLeod

University of Tasmania