The Cumminscorp Folly

Aquafarmer approached cumminscorp and offered free the solutions to the C-Box woes. They were very interested until I requested $50,000 in unpaid wages. Now they threaten legal suits for publishing this page. Fare Enough.

However, due to legal requests any statement made here must be considered as a work of complete fiction. Wally is a fictional character at best.

Cumminscorp Ltd (My Story)

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Imagine you had a fish culture system where hundreds of specialised holding tanks were all in the one building. Imagine these systems were called C-Boxes.

Now imagine that in the first tank you were growing barramundi. In the second tank you were growing coral trout and in the third you had Atlantic Salmon and in the fourth you had abalone.

For the first time in aquaculture history, it would be possible to culture species from both ends of the Australian Continent under the one roof. Now, imagine you had 1000 tanks under culture. Which is about 4000 tonnes of fish per year (if done right).

Freshwater and saltwater species virtually side by side utilising the vertical integration of hatchery and nursery technology, a continuous production line, if you will, all based on recycled water and existing technology.

And, such a facility could be located anywhere including the CBD of any major city.

Not only would it be possible to have fresh fish 'at the front door' but these specialised holding tanks would have a legitimate fish capacity twice that of any other current commercial fish tank system (RAS Aquaculture).

How good would you feel?

Such was the euphoria when joining the Cumminscorp C-Box Aquaculture Team at Gaven on the Gold Coast in 2005. I had the best job in the world.

As a passionate aquaculture person I cannot begin to describe the excitement and camaraderie of the anticipated expectations. C-Box technology was about to go public and we had significant orders into the Arab countries, one to New Zealand and one confirmed sale of 1000 C-Boxes into Singapore, or so we were told. At Mr Cummins request I jumped at the chance to buy shares. My $0.14 cent shares "would easily reach $0.50 cents within 3 months" he told me.

Here was my chance. I would be technical support manager for a worldwide product and something I believed in. I borrowed as much money as I could and purchased 624,378 shares.

In 3 months I would be worth $321,000.

What Went Wrong?

In 3 months I had had a mild heart attack from over work and then, ,,, I was suspended without written notification. My personal files were destroyed, my office was trashed, I was physically escorted from the premises and I now owed $90,000.

Four days after little Johnny Howard's Work Place Laws came into effect I was suspended without written notification and my job given to Mr M Smith.

Go Mr Rudd! For work place is a respect not a reform.

My euphoria had quickly gone from those dizzy heights to a feeling of riding a roller-coaster with at least one wheel missing. At any moment I would be thrown, screaming and falling to my death.

After six weeks, however, I was simply reinstated as if nothing had happened. Mr M Smith has been sacked.

In that short time my close friend, Mr P Smith, had taken over my job and managed to kill at least 5 tonne of barramundi. These so called private consultants had ordered feeding rates to 4% per day.

Madness!!! In the form of toxic total ammonia with pH levels maintained at 7.5...

A wonderful future in RAS was wrecked on 120 disease riddled C-Boxes. And now my job to fix.

The so-called consultants had totally destroyed 6 months work in 6 weeks.

The disease was facinating from a biologist point of view. The species remains unknown and undocumented in Australia. The outbreak consisted of a potent combination of epistylis, which is normally fairly harmless, and, Aeromonas hydrophila . A hyrdrophilla is an endemic patthogen to aquaculture which is observed under high magnification as a jittery type motility black spot.

The combination of the two organisms could literally strip all the scales off a 1 kg barramundi in 3 days. The large scales would then clogg the filters and overflow the tanks, all while the scaleless fish were still alive. The poor fish took about 6 days to die.

I was reinstated to fix the problem the same day the 'consultants' were sack, along with my ex-good friend Mr P Smith.

We started out using maximum dose rates of highly toxic formalin to bring the pathogens under control. But within 3 weeks the maximum allowable dose rate had no effect. We had used over 100 litres of the stuff by this stage.

We had to improvise with an unproven chemical plan to develop and administer high doses of copper sulphate for 2 hours and then neutralize the toxicity. The actual details can be obtained by emailing the author. The process worked well.

Such a tragedy it was. During the first three weeks staff filled tub after tub with dying fish. We all worked hour after hour removing dead carcases. Damming and over flowing the tanks faster than we could remove them. The emotional strains were high on staff moral as we continued to deal with a system inferior to the published information.

Staff efforts eventually get the disease under control but inadequate filtration designs allowed it to return again and again. No lessons were learnt and no ears were listening. There were fundamental flaws in the way Cumminscorp did business.

Contracted management showed little interest in addressing serious design issues on some of the Cumminscorp patents. Anyone displaying regard or concern was removed for being treacherous to business efforts. It was truly the dark ages of aquaculture and in that lack of light I resigned in July 2006.

I truly hope Cumminscorp can possibly survive as a business and not fail as predicted by the 2006 Annual Report. Rainwater tank manufacture wont last forever and there are still issues. I think Cumminscorp's steerage needs work. As I have pointed out the concepts are feasible and there are commercial solutions to C- Product teething issues.

As a shareholder I am concerned for my financial bourdon as are all the many families who have supported Ian Cummins in his quest for something brilliant.

I am awed by the scope of such a conceptual challenge.

Unfortunately, families have lost their homes, life savings have been lost and there is a need for recompense. Hopefully, that will take the form of product sales and dynamic adjustments on patented technologies. There are commercial solutions and there are indeed, world-wide sales and demand for such technologies.

So I say " less with the fancy cars and more of the sleeves rolled up", please.

Recently I missed out on an aquaculture contract because I had been involved with Cumminscorp. Cumminscorp has given Australian Aquaculture a shoddy name. So be it, but I resigned and lost about $90,000 in the process to keep my integrity. However the truth and integrity have little to do with aquaculture and DPI research in today's Australia.

Without doubt, the real tragedy is when a nobel pursuit becomes a facade and all those who believed in, and supported the dreams are left standing on the outside.

Mr Cummins, it was their funds that made your journey all possible.

Special thanks to the 2005 - 2006 Cumminscorp Aquaculture Team. We managed the unmanageable.

WE DONE GOOD

Attention RAS Aquaculture!!!

Before you buy anything don't miss the opportunity to examine our design features.

The Pod System Makes Money Based on $7.00 per kilo.

Please tell us of any, yes ANY Australian RAS system that will stand that test.

We Don't Think So

We Were The First in Australia

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