Arctic salmon company making “strong progress”

The north Norwegian fish farmer Andfjord Salmon Group AS, has reported solid progress with its build-out at its Arctic location at Kvalnes in Andøya.

CEO Martin Rasmussen said the next two pools at Andfjord’s flow-through farm site are starting to take shape, adding: “Just before the summer we reported faster than expected progress for the development of our waterways.

“I am pleased to share today that the performance has been equally strong throughout August, following scheduled reduced activity in July.”

“The waterways are the arteries that supply water to the flow-through systems in our pools, so they are key to our expansion.”

During the past few days, the waterways, including inlet and outlet tunnel, had reached 73% completion – a noticeable increase from 57% in early July .

In this first phase of the Kvalnes build-out, Andfjord Salmon is completing four new pools, increasing total production capacity to 8,000 tonnes HOG by 2025.

This initial phase includes developing shared infrastructure such as waterways and a harbour area that will support future production of 40,000 tonnes salmon at Kvalnes.

The harbour area workstream is currently at 48% completion, up from 42% since early July while the pool construction workstream was also progressing in line with Andfjord Salmon’s build-out plan.

CEO Rasmussen said the foundation work for the two next pools – K1 and K3 – was in its final stages, and production of the pool walls is ongoing.

The crane that will install the pool walls was assembled and already in place above the pool pit.

“Everything we need to ramp up pool construction is now in place. The plan is to significantly increase production of concrete elements during September. We therefore expect to see an uptick in pool construction during the coming months,” he added.

A NOK 350m (£25m) private placement has been completed and the company has attracted US $10m (£7.6m) worth of investment from the leading North American company High Liner Foods.

Because of the expansion work, no salmon were produced during the second quarter, so the company produced a loss of NOK 18.8m (£1.3m)

Andfjord Salmon plan