Naughty Prawn Made Its Global Debut at Seafood Expo Less Than a Week After the Brand Even Launched

The majority of businesses wait for a brand launch to dry, just like a homeowner does with a freshly painted wall. Alex Farthing didn’t. He was standing on the floor of Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona six days after Naughty Prawn’s official launch, surrounded by buyers, exporters, and the somewhat weary crowd that always appears by the third day of any major industry show. He seemed to be unable to wait, and as you observe the timing of everything, you begin to question whether this impatience is a strength rather than a weakness.

Ambitious moves are nothing new to Farthing. Prior to Naughty Prawn, he was a co-founder of Delos, a software company based in Jakarta that assisted farmers with digitizing and automating their tasks. It appears that this endeavor, which started in 2021, gave him the technical assurance and frustration that ultimately brought him to this point. He told SeafoodSource that although farmers put a lot of love and effort into making a good product, “that product disappears into the system.” If you think about it long enough, the sentence is subtly bitter.

The two farms are located on Bangka, the ninth-largest island in the Indonesian archipelago, which is more well-known for its tin mining than its aquaculture. The crew there cultivates vannamei prawns, which are the mainstay of the world’s shrimp industry, but they grow them larger than most operations do. They typically have sixteen to twenty counts per kilogram. Twenty to thirty is feasible, which is actually quite large in terms of shrimp. The difference between a 16/20 and a 20/30 is obvious to anyone who has stood close to a sorting line; the latter feels nearly irrational in your hands.

The layering of options is what makes Naughty Prawn marginally more intriguing than another brand-from-the-farm tale. The company is certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which is becoming a requirement for any retailer in Europe. It collaborated with the Shrimp Welfare Project and Scottish equipment manufacturer Ace Aquatec to introduce electric stunners, a humane method of slaughter that was largely ignored by shrimp farmers until recently. That choice has a subtle seriousness that contrasts with the lighthearted name.

The technology background also appears to be evident in biosecurity. The team has increased survival rates to between 85 and 90 percent by implementing pond-by-pond protocols in collaboration with Genics, an Australian company. Around 70 is the industry baseline. It explains why Farthing keeps returning to the notion that technology only matters if you can get paid for using it. That fifteen-point difference is not insignificant; it’s the difference between a difficult year and a comfortable one.

It’s working on the name itself. The slogan “Naughty taste, nice business” sounds like it was workshopped over too much coffee, and Farthing seemed to be aware of that, half-joking that the company’s flavor is the only naughty aspect. The customers navigating those Barcelona aisles will determine whether retailers will agree or whether the cheekiness comes across as confident or tense. Whether a six-day-old brand can compete with exhibitors who have been there for decades is still up in the air.

Observing such a move, however, gives me the impression that the traditional strategy of waiting until everything is perfect is subtly losing ground. Prior to this one, Farthing started four businesses, studied agriculture and marine biology, and began working with dementia patients in a London healthcare facility. A prawn brand is not predicted by any of that path. However, there is currently very little that can be predicted about the seafood industry.