About Us

River Stone’s founder, Joseph Ayoub, talks about River Stone’s vision and unique value proposition.
This 3 min video tells the story.
 

Meet Our Founder Joseph AYOUB

  River Stone’s founder, genetics engineer Joseph Ayoub, had fond childhood memories of food having a delightful and distinctive flavours and aromas which had sadly been gradually diminished by 70 years or so of intensive commercial farming practices.

Disillusioned with his research laboratory job, Joseph took a bold step, quit his day job in 2007 and set up a small barramundi fish farm in Riverstone NSW that emulates the natural pristine environment of the Barramundi fish. Joseph’s goal was to remove the toxins and heavy metals typically found in the farmed Barramundi, but found mercury levels was still too high in his Barramundi farm that he tracked down to the use of commercial fish feed from unsustainable sources.

So, Joseph went about to develop his own fish feed sourced from sustainable ‘clean and organic’ inputs ensuring nil toxic metal content!

In the pursuit of attaining the best tasting Barramundi protein, a twist of events occurred when the fish manure was thrown away as fertiliser at the farm trees and vegetables patch. To Joseph’s surprise the fish manure had caused the trees and plants to grow prolifically and the fruit yield, fruit size along with the colour and smell was just amazing that took him back to those childhood memories – the irony was that the gold was not so much in the fish but in the fish poo!

This accidental discovery put Joseph on a course to enhance the manure and remove the smell. Joseph upgraded the farm to use Recirculation Aquaculture Systems which in turn allows total control of the input and outputs, including the harvesting of the fish excrement as a by-product which is purified and sold in concentrated liquid and powder dried slow-release formula fertiliser that came to be known as Swift Grow.

The River Stone Fish Farm operation uses the latest monitoring and sensing technology to reduce the manual and complicated effort. The operation is modular and scalable to produce large volumes of liquid and slow release powder fertilisers.

With the help of a computer engineer, Emil Isaac, in 2019 Joseph earlier frustration in promoting Swift Grow took flight in promoting the amazing benefits of Swift Grow to the world.

Our Story

River Stone Aquaculture Innovations (formerly River Stone Fish Farm) was established with a primary goal in mind: “to produce sustainable Barramundi crops free from all contaminants”. It wasn’t long after we started we realised that we had to eliminate all commercial fish feed, and started growing our own for two reasons. Commercial feeds are not sustainable, and are heavily polluted with heavy metals, such as mercury. After eliminating fish meals from the diet, we managed to drop the levels of contaminates by 90%. However, the 10% still present was still toxic. We discovered that these contaminants were introduced to our feed through the use of commercial fertilisers. Hence we started utilising our fish water to grow our crops and completely eliminated all contaminants.

Today, we bottle our fish water, Swift Grow, in a concentrated form, 1 litre make 450 litres of fertiliser. It is suitable for all types of plants and vegetations. The benefits of using Swift Grow include: Non-Toxic Promotes heathy soil Liquid form, readily available for plants to absorb Eco-friendly and safe Improves the structure of the soil and increase its ability to hold water and nutrients. Less costly Improves the structure of the soil and increase its ability to hold water and nutrients. More lush lawns, flowers and fruits.

Know More About Us

Swift Grow is the only full spectrum natural biological soil microbiome fertiliser uniquely produced by the fish gut metabolic process when our fish eat our uniquely formulated organic fish feed. It is produced locally at our sustainable Australian land-based barramundi fish farm. Swift Grow is a natural super food for your plants. It is an organic solution rich in macronutrients (both primary and secondary), as well as micronutrients.

The primary macronutrients are Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (N.P.K). You may be most familiar with these three nutrients because they are required in larger quantities than other nutrients.

The secondary macronutrients are Sulphur, Magnesium, Carbon, and Calcium. Although they are called secondary, these elements are not necessarily needed by plants in smaller quantities. The micronutrients nutrients, also known as essential elements, are required in very small quantities. If any micronutrient is deficient, the growth of the entire plant will not reach maximum yield.

Did you know?

It’s all about the Carbon. Adding Carbon to the soil is critical to restoring health to the soil by increasing the organic matter content. Afterall, Organic Science is the study of Carbon compounds.

Producers in today’s modern agricultural systems are working with soils that contain far less carbon than our soils originally contained prior to the implementation of modern agriculture. All of our soils are now degraded. Commercial fertilisers have doubled the synthetic nitrogen and phosphorous in our soils in the past century. This is likely to be the largest impact on the nitrogen cycle in 2.5bn years.

Swift Grow is an excellent source of natural nutrients that is good for both plants and the environment. It is very rich in natural nutrients such as Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, and Calcium. It also contains traces of Macronutrients such as Iron, Boron, Molybdenum, Zinc, Manganese & Magnesium.

Excellence in Innovation award

After 12 years of Research and Development and 4 years of several university-controlled trials, commercial field trials with nurseries, golf courses, permaculture groups and hundreds of mum and
dad gardeners, Swift Grow fertiliser started winning wide recognition starting with the 2020 City of Parramatta Excellence in Innovation
award.

Environmental Impact

The primary benefit of Swift Grow is restoring the natural soil micro-organisms (active lactobacillus, fungi, yeasts and other photosynthetic bacteria) has been scientifically ascertained to be caused by soil microbial depletion which causes to top soil erosion that contributes to global warming. Swift Grow can help to reverse global warming and has been certified by the NSW Department of Primary Industry (see attached) as: “contains microbial components that play a dual role of promoting healthy soil, and those same components also bio-suppress and helps control harmful micro-organisms/pathogens in soils. That dual role makes Swift Grow safe to use in soils in NSW and elsewhere.“

Covid-19 Pivotal Impact

During the first 3 months of Covid pandemic, the emerging company pivoted to address the virus by developing a TGA approved disinfectant and sanitiser from fish peptides which kills Covid on contact and remains active till washed off in water. The company then went on to became a preferred disinfectant supplier to four Australian state governments.

Bee Population Impact

The developed fertiliser from odourless fish manure helps restore bee population from pathogens that are killing bees around the world. See attached nursery testimonial. This is supported by university publications and hundreds of field trials.

Community Impact

Local nurseries, golf courses, gardeners and farmers are now using Swift Grow to restore their soil micro-organisms to optimal health and experience certified organic fruit, vegetables and flowers the way they used to taste and smell along with their nutritional benefits on human health and well-being. The 2019 bushfire ravaged farms and forest parts of NSW south coast are being rejuvenated back to life with Swift Grow fertiliser to the amazement of farmers who had given up hope.

Export Impact

With funds injection the NSW Export Grand and guidance from the NSW Treasury and AusTrade, Swift Grow is now making its mark on the world farming stage with increasing volume exports starting with the UAE, France and the UK.

Personal Impact

The life-dedication to developing Swift Grow fertiliser had been hard on Joseph and his family as he had poured himself into his research. Thankfully his family had supported him during the most challenging earlier times, to which he could not have achieved Swift Grow without that ongoing support.

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