Feed main driver in salmon costs

PRODUCTION costs for Norway\’s aquaculture industry rose by 50 per cent in the four years between 2012 and 2016, reports Nofima, Norway\’s Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research.
And the main culprit seems to be the rising price of fish feed. Nofima researchers Audun Iversen and Øystein Hermansen said the increasing cost of fighting salmon lice has been given the most attention in recent years, but it was feed prices that are currently presenting fish farmers with the biggest challenge.
They said keeping production costs down was important to maintain future growth within the industry, adding: ‘There is a limit to what breeders can do when it comes to increased feed prices.’
Nofima has been working with the research firm Kontali on behalf of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Research Fund (FHF), in a bid to determine the main driving force when it came to costs.
Between 2014 and 2018 feed costs increased from 14 kroners (NOK) per kilo (for slaughtered and packed salmon) to NOK 18.
A weakened Norwegian kroner was partly to blame, but there were other factors and feed was becoming more expensive generally, whatever the state of the national currency.
The cost of trying to prevent lice had fallen slightly in the period between 2015 and 2016.
Meanwhile, Norway\’s aquaculture authorities have received almost 900 applications for future development permits, with the deadline now closed.