Q2 harvests down for SalMar and Lerøy

SalMar and Lerøy Seafood have become the latest large salmon farmers to report lower second quarter harvests.

In an Oslo stock exchange announcement yesterday, SalMar registered a total output for the April to June period of 32,400 tonnes against 36,600 tonnes 12 months ago.

Today, Lerøy announced a harvest of just over 33,000 tonnes of salmon and trout, around 3,600 tonnes lower than last year. However, the figure is 1,000 tonnes up on the first quarter of this year.

Lerøy also owns one of Norway’s largest whitefish trawler fleets (Havfisk) and the catch volume rose by 2,300 tonnes to 18,600 tonnes.

On Tuesday Bakkafrost of the Faroe Islands followed by Norway Royal Salmon were the first to announce lower harvests.

SalMar said in May that the international data provider Kontali was predicting that the global volume of salmon harvested was likely to decrease by 7% in the second quarter of 2022 – a forecast which is now being borne out by the latest updates. It also said the UK (Scotland) would take the biggest hit with a 20% reduction.

Northern Norway was the region which saw the largest fall in volume. Lerøy and SalMar share ownership of Scottish Sea Farms, but their figures will not become known until the full Q2 reports in August.

The SalMar regional breakdown (2021 figures in brackets) is:

• Farming Central Norway 20,700 tonnes (21,000 tonnes;
• Farming Northern Norway 8,700 tonnes (13,300 tonnes); and
• Icelandic Salmon (Arnarlax) 3,000 tonnes 3,000 tonnes (2,300 tonnes).

Next year SalMar’s figures will be very much larger once the acquisition of the NTS group (which includes Norway Royal Salmon) goes through.