FRESH PROPOSAL – The Largest Salmon Producer to Raise Fish in Ships
There is a fresh thinking in the industry of fish raising. The world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmons plans to start farming fish inside a ship rather than the sea!
The stringent state rules almost makes impossible to build traditional fish farms on the open water in Norway. These state rules are intended to curb the outbreak of sea lice which can kill young fish.
Marine Harvest ASA has been trying to boost production as the current prices are at a peak due to very high demand and the supply is low.
In efforts to solve the parasite problem and stop farmed fish from escaping into the open sea, the Norwegian government sought solutions.
Marine Harvest ASA has proposed to raise salmons inside unwanted cargo ship. Employing a Panamax vessel better suited to carrying coal or steel was one of the responses to a Norwegian government program seeking ways to solve the parasite problem and stop farmed fish from escaping into the open sea. It proposes to award coveted farming licences to the winning proposals.
Buying a 10-year-old ship would cost about $7 million and modifying it with six holding tanks for fish may cost another $2.5 million to $5 million, said Erik Stavseth, an analyst at Oslo-based investment bank Arctic Securities. That would put the total bill, including the government license, at about $18 million, less than half as much as building a conventional farm may cost, he said.
Dozens of companies have submitted applications, but the only one approved so far is from SalMar ASA, Norway’s third-biggest producer, to develop an offshore farm far out in the ocean where sea lice can’t survive.
“It’s more or less kick-starting fish farming again in a new way,” Alf-Helge Aarskog, chief executive officer of Marine Harvest, said in an interview last month after the application was submitted.
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Source: Bloomberg
