A year of investment – and challenges - in land based farming in 2024
2024 saw some land-based farmers turning a corner, while others faced a rockier road.
This year has seen more investment in land-based farming, including innovative grow-out solutions around the world, and hatcheries and post-smolt facilities for sea-based fish farmers.
In January, land-based fish farmer Salmon Evolution announced that by the end of 2023 it had recorded its all-time high biomass, at more than 2,200 tonnes. The Salmon Evolution site at Indre Harøy, Norway, is a hybrid flow-through facility which the company says is proving to be good for both the health of the salmon and the environment.
In May came news that Salmon Evolution had reached a significant milestone with its first operational profit. The company reported a group EBITDA of NOK 24.1m (£1.65m) for the first quarter of 2024, although in terms of financial profit the company was still in the red.
In Iceland, Geo Salmo announced in January that it had raised ISK two billion (around £11.5m) for its large-scale land-based salmon farm near the town of Þorlákshöfn. The farm, like that of Salmon Evolution, will operate a hybrid flow-through system.
February brought bad news for Norwegian farmer Gigante Salmon, which reported a high level of mortality in the second smolt batch released into its land-based facility in Rodøy. The company said it was scaling down its deployment of smolts in order to avoid further problems.
Helge Albertsen
Later in the spring, the company’s CEO Helge Albertsen left the company abruptly after a warning that construction costs for the Rodøy site are now expected to be 50% higher than initial estimates. Kjell Lorentsen, a member of the board, was appointed as interim CEO.
There was better news for Gigante in July, when the company managed to raise the equivalent of more than £16m in a share issue.
In Japan, salmon farmer Proximar was also facing challenges with a loss of fish following a tank breach at its facility near Mount Fuji. Initial estimates suggested that 50,000 fish had been lost in the incident. It appeared to have been due to a leakage that washed away soil under the tank. Some of the fish had been saved and transferred to another tank. The financial loss was expected to be around £450,000.
In March there were reports that Norwegian Mountain Salmon (NMS), which already has plans underway for a flow-through farm on the Norwegian island of Utsira, is interested in building a 90,000 tonne salmon farm on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides. The Scottish farm, if it goes ahead, could contain as many as 224 fish tanks.
Later, in May, came news that NMS is also consulting on an alternative Scottish location, on the south coast of Shetland.
In the US, Florida-based salmon producer Atlantic Sapphire raised a further NOK 369m (£27.5m) for its recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) plant. The company had encountered extra expenses linked to higher than expected temperatures in Florida, as well as gender maturation problems.
AquaBounty, which produces salmon genetically-modified for faster growth, announced that its Indiana-based RAS farm was on the market. The company needed more capital to fund a larger, 10,000 tonne facility in Ohio. It was purchased, in July, by the Wisconsin company Superior Fresh which, unusually, combines salmon farming with growing organic leafy greens such as lettuce.
In September it emerged that AquaBounty is also planning to sell its Rollo Bay hatchery on Prince Edward Island, Canada. David Melbourne, CEO, said: “We continue to be focused on securing funding for both our near and long-term needs.”
In April we reported that Scottish Sea Farms had taken its first delivery of unfertilised (“green”) salmon eggs for the new incubation unit at the company’s Barcaldine hatchery. The move is part of a strategy aimed at making the company’s operations more self-reliant in terms of ova supply and less dependent on imported eggs.
Scottish Sea Farms’ Head of Freshwater, Rory Conn, said: “Without the green egg unit, it simply wouldn’t have been possible to produce smolts from Scottish-sourced ova at this time of year.”
In Norway, plans for a new post-smolt facility on the Ross Islands ran into opposition on environmental grounds. The new site, which Gaia Salmon wants to build, would involve a programme of detonations to clear space on the two islands concerned.
In May, Nordic Aqua Partners’ RAS salmon farm in Ningbo, China, completed its first commercial harvest. Chief Executive Officer Ragnar Joensen said: “Our first harvest confirms the high-quality of our farmed Atlantic salmon, achieving an average weight of approximately 5.7 kilograms LW, with mortality rates of below two per cent, no signs of maturation issues and a superior rate of 99%.
“These excellent biological results underscore Nordic Aqua’s capability to maintaining superior fish health and welfare standards, which translates into premium product quality for the highly attractive Chinese consumer market.”
The US saw mixed fortunes for aquaculture companies in June. Land-based start-up Katahdin Salmon received a US $5m (£3.9m) grant for its proposed RAS farm in Maine, on the US east coast. Now rebranded as “Great Northern Salmon”, the company plans to build its farm on the site of an abandoned paper mill at Millinocket. The grant will be used for remediation of this former industrial site.
Nordic Aquafarms, meanwhile, resorted to legal action against the city of Belfast, Maine, to try to reverse a decision by the local authority which effectively denied the company access to a vital area of intertidal mud flats required for the outflow from its proposed RAS farm on Penobscot Bay.
In July we reported that Iceland’s Laxey had been granted a licence for a flow-through farm in the Westman Islands, on the country’s south coast. The licence covers up to 7,000 tonnes of production.
The pressures on suppliers in the RAS sector were starkly highlighted when Billund Aquaculture, a Danish supplier of aquaculture technology, declared bankruptcy. As we reported in August, the company said that despite good operational progress this year, earlier challenges – including the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – had been too much.
In November, it emerged that Billund founder Christian Sorensen had set up a new company, Billund Aquatech, focused on design and consultancy.
In October we reported that Bakkafrost’s hatchery at Applecross, on the west coast of Scotland, had been granted a licence for a pyrolysis unit to turn its organic sludge into inert biochar.
The new system will take “waste” matter from the hatchery’s wastewater treatment and turn it into a product with value, that can be used as a fertiliser and soil improver – an example of the circular economy in action.
We also learned that Danish family-owned aquaculture business AquaPri, which farms trout and zander in land- and sea-based facilities, had entered into a partnership with the French Van Der Wees family, which has injected a large amount of capital into the company.
And in Norway, salmon producer Nordlaks signed a deal with Harstad Municipality for 70 acres of land, for its proposed smolt facility at Rødskjaer. It will be the company’s fourth, and largest, smolt facility, creating an estimated 50 new jobs in the area.
October also saw Fish Farmer’s Aqua Agenda webinar on Land Based Strategy, featuring Thue Hom of Aquafounders Capital and the Black Cod Company, Paul Howes of the Centre for Sustainable Aquatic Research, Swansea, and Trond Schaug-Pettersen of Salmon Evolution. You can see the discussion at www.youtube.com/@fishfarmermag.
And in November Japan’s Mitsubishi added to its aquaculture portfolio with a major investment in the trout “gigafactory” concept being developed by Finnish company Finnforel.
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