The development of a new aquaculture species in Australia presents a number of commercial challenges As with all such ventures, there are issues concerning access to the market, supply of fingerlings the need for investors to secure a return on their capital, etc. There are also plenty of unknowns about the growth, nutrition, processing, market size, consumer acceptance etc. that are worthy of investigation and if solved would benefit all cobia producers.

The opportunity is to develop a collaborative, whole of chain approach to launching this new species so that the market is carefully developed and supplied with fish of consistent quality at economically sustainable prices.

To achieve this there is first a need to understand the overall feasibility of Australian farm-grown cobia and to identify market gaps that the development of Cobia could fill. Secondly there are issues surrounding collaborative industry development that need to be explored. Experiences with business cluster development seem highly relevant to the development of the Cobia industry. In fact it has been found by Waite (2001) that Australian firms are insignificant in the global market but if they compete collabratively through the formation of a cluster have the ability to combine their strengths to raise their competitiveness and take advantage of growing markets. There is a need therefore to better understand the cluster development concept and to explore how this can be applied within this context. Can the cluster concept work with the businesses located so far away from each other and is there enough commonality in their business development aspirations to overcome the disadvantages of working independently while attempting to establish and further penetrate the market with a relatively unknown species?