Work starts on Mowi’s new processing plant MOWI has announced that work on its new state of the art processing facility at Hitra in Norway is now under way. The company said “hopes are high” for the benefits it will bring. Work on the new factory started in April and is scheduled for completion in the first half of 2024. The factory will have a production capacity of 100,000 tonnes and will replace Mowi’s current factory at Ulvan. Plans for the plant were submitted as long ago as 2020, but details of the project were not confirmed until March of this year. Speaking about the new facility, Olaf Skjærvik, director of Mowi Mid Region, said: “This will be a state-of-the-art factory built for the future. The project group has done a thorough job, and we are very happy that we now can start construction. “The new factory will produce high-quality seafood in a much more efficient way than we do today. The building design is very modern and will create a more welcoming environment for our
staff whilst optimising health and safety features.” The new processing plant at Hitra will receive fish from sea harvest vessels only, rather than wellboats. Mowi Norway is now using four sea harvest vessels to supply its processing plants, and the South Region in Norway
Hawesta’s processing facility in Lübeck is set to close THAI Union’s German subsidiary Rügen Fisch AG is to close its processing plant in Lübeck, transferring operations to Sassnitz, where the rest of the Rügen Fisch processing is based. The plant in Lübeck, the secondlargest city on Germany’s Baltic coast, is currently run by Rügen’s subsidiary Hawesta, which produces a variety of canned fish including salmon and mackerel. Rügen Fisch said the Hawesta works council and the 200 employees were informed of these plans yesterday, and discussions with the employee representatives are starting now. The statement added: “The
company management would like to retain as many employees as possible for their production in Sassnitz. To this end, they are currently exploring options for supporting a move from Lübeck to Sassnitz. “The German and European canned seafood markets have seen headwinds in recent years. Rising labor, energy, ingredient, and packaging costs together with high fish and raw material prices, have led to an increasingly difficult market environment since 2019. This transfer of production is crucial for Rügen Fisch to ensure the long-term viability of the Group and to strengthen the position of the longstanding Hawesta brand to remain as competitive as possible.” The majority of the Rügen Fisch’s processing is centred around Sassnitz, a seaside town on the island of Rügen in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
is already fully based on this technology. Building on this experience, Mowi intends to increase the capacity of these vessels and, in the long term, substitute wellboat transport with sea harvest vessels, which represent an improvement in fish welfare, the company says.
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