Near 50% drop in Bakkafrost Scotland harvest

The Bakkafrost Scotland third quarter harvest will be down by almost half the total of last year, a trading update from the company has revealed.

The total figure is 4,100 tonnes, 2,900 tonnes from Scotland North and 1,200 tonnes from Scotland South.

This compared with a total of 8,100 tonnes during Q3 last year.

Although it is starting to turn things around, the company continues to battle various biological issues in Scotland.

The situation in the Faroe Islands appears to have steadied. The total harvest for July to September is around 16,700 tonnes, marginally lower than a year ago when the figure was 16,800 tonnes.

The Faroes total is made up of Farming North 12,000 tonnes, Farming West 2,000 tonnes and Farming South around 2,800 tonnes.

All harvest volumes are given as head-on gutted (HOG) equivalents.

Bakkafrost issued a profit warning in mid-July, after it adjusted the full year slaughter volume in the Faroe Islands down to 63,000 tonnes. It said Scotland remained on target at 30,000 tonnes.

Whether these latest figures have changed that forecast will become known when Bakkafrost publishes its full third quarter results on 7 November.

Meanwhile, the latest figures from Statistics Faroe Islands show that the export value of salmon dropped by DKK 255m (almost £30m), a fall of 8%, during the first seven months of this year. The volume total for the same period fell by 19% or 7,283 tonnes.

The organisation says the price of salmon has been good but it started to stagnate towards the end of that period.

Total seafood exports from the Faroes over the same period were worth DKK 6.6 billion (£766.5m).