Mauritius straddles the Great Conveyor Belt that moves massive undercurrents of mineral and nutrient-rich deep sea water around the globe. The land-based oceanic industry aims at exploiting this situation through sustainable and environment-friendly technologies and processes which will result in niche products catering for profitable market segments.

First wave commercial applications are projected in the following sectors:

The scientific properties of that water have been proven through research conducted by the Mauritius Research Council. Analyses have confirmed that this water is pure, free from surface pollution and other contaminants, and has rich mineral and nutrient properties. Mauritius will be the world’s first country to pump sea water from a depth of 1,000 metres, and that too in the cleanest of all oceans.

The Government is committed to developing this industry. A special purpose vehicle has been created and some 300 hectares of land earmarked for a dedicated LBOI park.

Green Data Centres

With its excellent telecommunications infrastructure, enabling regulatory framework and low tax regime, Mauritius is well placed for hosting data centres. Offshore hosting of data is a service that now represents a global market of nearly 40 billion USD.

Power supply scalability and stability is a blocking issue for data centres due to the high energy requirements for cooling. In Mauritius, the land-based oceanic industry (LBOI) is being developed to exploit deep-sea water and the coldness of the water generated by this industry can be used as a renewable source of cooling energy.

Currently, relationships are being developed by the Board of Investment (BOI) with leading hosting / data centre providers with the objective of drafting a Memorandum of Understanding that will lay the foundations for green data centres in line with the LBOI cooling component.