NaturalShrimp’s research and development plant in La Coste, Texas was completely destroyed by a fire. No one was injured as a result of the fire. While still too early to determine definitively, the company believes such fire was caused by a natural gas leak.

The total size of all facilities at the La Coste location is 53,000 square feet, although the damage occurred at the company’s pilot production plant that housed nursery, grow-out tanks and EC machinery and consist of 35,000 square feet. The fire did not include the separate greenhouse/reservoirs and utility buildings.

“The future of NaturalShrimp, Inc remains very bright. We believe the insurance proceeds will assist the company to reconstruct a newer, state-of-the-art building in which to house our tanks and equipment. Our shrimp, which numbered approximately 1.5 million PL’s, was growing on schedule and were extremely healthy. Our equipment and new tanks were operating efficiently and as we had expected. All of our subsidiary initiatives continue to do well and we expect to announce the status of those initiatives shortly,” said Gerald Easterling, CEO of NaturalShrimp, in a letter to shareholders.

The company developed the first commercially viable RAS system for shrimp using patented technology to produce fresh, never frozen, naturally grown shrimp, without the use of antibiotics or toxic chemicals.