The people at Ornatas drive change and focus on the future.

Ornatas is led by a team driven by building a sustainable future for seafood. We are dedicated to doing this, whilst creating real opportunities in global communities, and taking care of our environment.

Collectively the skilled team offer a wealth of enthusiasm and experience in science and innovation, a deep knowledge and understanding of the ocean environment and aquaculture systems, as well as financial, strategic and creative thinking to drive the company forward.

Chief Executive Officer

Scott Parkinson

Scott is passionate about science and the sea. He has worked in aquaculture for over 30 years, across research and development, commercial operations and sales. Scott is dedicated to a sustainable future for aquaculture, building the skills and expertise of the Ornatas team and engaging with communities to reach this goal.

Senior Management Team

Tony Barton

General Manager

Tony is the Ornatas General Manager. His role is to oversee core services that enable our workplace to function efficiently and our team to thrive. He is also responsible for business administration and risk management. Tony has a collaborative approach, working with his team and across all levels of the business to build the best processes and ensure the right resourcing is in place to get everything done safely and effectively.

Jennifer Blair

Hatchery And Research & Development Manager

Jen oversees the commercialisation of the lobster hatchery technology developed by UTAS at our Toomulla Beach site. As our Hatchery and Research and Development Manager, Jen manages special projects and takes the lead on our strategic research and partnerships, while also focusing on the establishment of Ornatas’ grow-out operations, which has become a top priority for the company’s future.

John Breen

Nursery & Farm Manager

Armed with over 18 years of farm management experience, John is perfectly suited as our Farm Manager. He oversees the production planning and commercialisation of nursery and grow out operations of the Tropical Rock Lobsters at our Toomulla Beach site.

Technical Team

Brandon Panebianco

Hatchery Team Leader

Brandon is our Hatchery Team Leader, who coordinates the hatchery staff tasks. Brandon is responsible for the construction of RAS systems and supporting infrastructure around the farm. He also plays an important role in assisting with managing the operation of RAS systems, animal husbandry and health management, water quality management and feeding.

Lachlan Davison

Nursery Team Leader

Lachlan coordinates activities with our juvenile lobsters in the nursery. He works across all areas of our hatchery operations including juvenile production, larval rearing, broodstock and systems maintenance. The major focus of his role is managing the juveniles in our hatchery which includes the operation of the recirculating aquaculture systems, animal husbandry and health management, water quality management, and feeding.

Sandra Villamil

Research & Project Manager

Sandra is our Project Manager for the CRCNA project. As our Research Officer she participates in the scientific aspects of the project, including experimental design, data analysis and communication. She also contributes to implementing our biosecurity and TRL health monitoring plans, which all underpin the provision of quality juveniles for raft grow-out research.

Hannah Lees

Administration and Compliance Co-ordinator

Hannah oversees our administration processes to ensure things run smoothly. She monitors stock, undertakes ordering and processes payroll. Hannah also contributes to site safety compliance and ensures all workers go home safely at the end of the day.

Benjamin Smith

Senior Grow-Out Technician

Ben is responsible for ensuring our juvenile lobsters have the best quality water and maintaining our grow-out systems. Ben is playing a key role in the development of the grow-out systems, and ensuring our lobsters have a smooth transition into Growout. His responsibilities include monitoring of feed consumption, growth and health of our lobsters.

Jordan MacRae

Senior Hatchery Technician

Jordan is responsible for looking after our larval lobsters by ensuring the larvae have the right water quality during their early stages of development, and that their tanks and hatchery systems are kept clean. Jordan also monitors juvenile growth and feed consumption to ensure they are healthy and achieving known growth benchmarks.

Caitlin Kelly

Senior Feed Technician

Caitlin is responsible for coordinating the feed technical team activities to achieve the regular manufacture of high-quality larval and juvenile feeds, ensuring that our young lobsters grow well and move through their benchmarking stages. Caitlin is also in charge of stock management for feed ingredients.

Mitchell Johnson

Senior Broodstock Technician

Mitch oversees our adult broodstock lobsters. His responsibilities include maintaining cleanliness of the broodstock systems, monitoring of our stock conditions, predicting and stocking larval hatches and daily feeding. He ensures our broodstock have optimal water quality, are in excellent condition and are healthy.

John
Neindorf

Senior Resident Technician

John resides on site to ensure operations run smoothly 24 hours a day. He monitors water quality and systems alarms and troubleshoots issues across all areas of the hatchery. When he is not problem solving, John works in the Larval Team to care for our lobster larvae.

Jessica Valenzuela

Hatchery Technician
Jessica is responsible for ensuring the tanks and hatchery systems are kept clean to provide optimal water quality for our larval lobsters. She regularly assesses larval condition with the team to monitor larval growth and feed consumption, to ensure the larvae are healthy and meeting their growth benchmarks. Jessica supports other areas in the hatchery, including feed production and bacteriology.

Harry
O'Keane

Juvenile Technician
Harry is part of a team that ensures the smooth operation of the Nursery systems by monitoring water quality and equipment and keeping the system and tanks clean. Part of Harry’s role is to ensure the juvenile lobsters are feeding well and meeting our growth expectations, which includes monitoring and recording of key biological parameters.
Bryce McGoulrick

Bryce McGoulrick

Larval Technician

Bryce is responsible for looking after our larval lobsters by ensuring the larvae have the right water quality during their early stages of development, and that their tanks and hatchery systems are kept clean. Bryce also monitors larval growth and feed consumption to ensure they are healthy and achieving known growth benchmarks.

Sarah Cross

Feed Technician

Sarah’s main role centres around our feed manufacturing area to ensure we produce feed that meets high quality control standards and is free from unwanted bacteria, all to support the growth of our Tropical Rock Lobsters. She also assists in the care of our lobster broodstock.

Hannah Grant

Juvenile Technician

Hannah works in our nursery team with our juvenile lobsters. Her responsibilities focus on providing the best husbandry to our juvenile animals. Her role includes daily water quality checks, ensuring tank cleanliness, delivering feed and ensuring optimal growth of our juvenile lobsters.

Jason McMillan

Juvenile Technician

Jason operates in our juvenile nursery caring for our young, newly emerged lobsters.  He works to achieve maximum growth rates of our juveniles through maintaining raceway system conditions, providing feed at optimum times, siphoning waste and cleaning lobster hides. Jason also maintains water quality and inputs data to ensure we have the best information possible.

Zoja Lulaj

Hatchery Technician

Zoja works in our larval room caring for our lobsters at their earliest stages of life. She ensures the water quality is all within parameters, the tanks are cleaned to the highest standard and daily feeds are delivered on time. When she is not looking after our larvae, Zoja assists in other areas of the hatchery such as Broodstock and Feeds.

Thomas Oriti

Aquaculture Systems Operator & Maintenance Technician

Tom is responsible for our primary water supply on site. He ensures the highest quality water is in supply and that livestock critical systems are functioning properly. He also contributes to on site maintenance, filter backwashes and pump restoration.

Owen Bacon

Maintenance Technician

Owen has worked at our Toomulla site from the very beginning. He is part of the Maintenance team and is responsible from building our site infrastructure from the group up. His daily tasks involve responding to maintenance requests to keep on site activities running smoothly.

Brian Mealor

Site Caretaker
Brian is the site groundsman, his role is to keep the farm clean and maintained. He works with the team to assist with equipment maintenance and the operation of light machinery when needed for construction activities.

Dianne Wardenaar

Clerical & Cleaning Technician

As our Clerical and Cleaning Technician, Dianne ensures all common areas on site are neat and tidy. Once everything is spick and span, she assists with administration duties such as data entry and invoice handling.

Ornatas Board

Executive Director

Martin Rees

Until 2015, Martin was a partner in KPMG Tasmania for 25 years specialising in corporate finance and commercialisation of new technologies. He was responsible for the establishment of In-tellinc, a Hobart based IT incubator/seed investor which over the past 15 years has invested in over 40 start-up companies generating a number of national and global successes.

Martin has been a founding Director of a number of these ventures and brings these skills to Ornatas. He is also a Director of Foundry Pty. Ltd, TasmaNet Pty. Ltd, St. Lukes Health Ltd and Pets Domain Ltd. Martin and his family own and operate a vineyard and wine business in Relbia and he is currently Chair of Wine Tasmania.

Director

Brian Kohl

Brian is the shareholder represenative on the Board. He is a born and bred Tasmanian with a long history in community and environmental areas of work. He has an Economics degree from the University of Tasmania, and has worked in all levels of Government before moving to private industry. He is currently a shareholder and Director of a number of Tasmanian companies and spends much of his time sailing throughout the South East Asian region.

Brian’ s professional career has included roles of Senior Economic Advisor to both the Labour and Greens parties. Brian is currently the Director and CEO of one of Tasmania’s largest private equity hedge funds.

Strength in partnerships

Research Partners

Commercial Partners

Funding Partners