Tony Pantages, Octaform: Engineering Food Security and Clean Energy

Tony Pantages spent 30 years making films, until a steelhead salmon changed his mind. In this episode, David sits down with the President of Octaform to talk about the strange, almost mystical moment on a river in the Great Bear Rainforest that pulled him out of the film industry and into clean energy. They dig into how a "giant tank" became the backbone of a global business spanning biogas, aquaculture, and food security, growing six times over in five years, and why the world's biggest challenges, from empty oceans to wasted food, are also its biggest opportunities. This is a conversation about betting on instinct, building infrastructure that has the potential to changes industries, and the belief that struggle, more than comfort, is what actually gets you there. 00:00 – Intro 00:38 – What Octaform does 01:41 – From Hollywood to clean tech: Tony's origin story 02:52 – Building and selling his first company (On Builders) 04:06 – Discovering Octaform and its explosive growth 05:36 – Customers, global expansion & funding the growth 07:34 – The Iceland "First Water" project — largest aquaculture build on Earth 08:54 – Aquaculture 1.0 to 4.0: why land-based fish farming matters 10:51 – "Salmon Canada": the national aquaculture plan (and pitching the PM) 14:26 – Food security, energy security & Canada's opportunity 14:57 – The hardest part of pivoting from film to industrial tech 18:19 – Leadership, empowerment & letting your team grow 22:19 – Scaling into new markets & reading what customers really want 25:03 – Greenwashing, real leaders & who inspires Tony 28:09 – Final advice: belief and struggle 29:02 – Sign-off