Nesvik returns to wellboat business

FORMER Norwegian seafood minister Harald T. Nesvik has landed a key job in the aquaculture industry less than a month after resigning from his cabinet role.

He is returning to Sølvtrans, the world’s largest wellboat builder and the company he worked for before turning to politics.

However, he cannot take up his post as communications manager at the company for six months. Under Norwegian law ministers have to embark on a period of ‘quarantine’ before returning to commercial or business activities.

Nesvik was one of several Progress Party politicians who resigned from the Conservative led coalition last month in a split over a decision to allow an ISIS supporting mother back into the country. He indicated at the time that he would probably return to the private sector.

A graduate in export marketing for fisheries, he entered the Storting, Norway’s parliament in 1997, and has written extensively about the fishing and fish farming industry.

Appointed fisheries and seafood minister in August 2018, he was popular with the industry. But he was also one of the architects of the new traffic light scheme for future aquaculture growth, which has not gone down well with the companies in red areas that must cut back on production. His Conservative Party successor, Geir-Inge Sivertsen, will now face the flak.

Sølvtrans has recently won contracts to build three new wellboats, due to be delivered in 2022, and Nesvik said he was looking forward to getting back to work, adding that the company had great potential for growth as long as the fish farming sector remained healthy.