Fish Farmer Magazine May 2017

Fish Farmer VOLUME 40

INNOVATION GAME

Jim Gallagher talks about growing Focus on the future with all the the Scottish industry latest technology

May Cover.indd 4

MAY 2017

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Serving worldwide aquaculture since 1977

DRIVING FORCE

NUMBER 05

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Global seafood at biggest and best Brussels show

Shetland firm takes delivery of new boat

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Contents 4-13 News

What’s happening in aquaculture in the UK and around the world

14-15 Farm tours

JENNY HJUL – EDITOR

What’s new?

In British Columbia

I

nnovation drives the aquaculture industry and is evident in every sector, from the increasingly sophisticated equipment and farming concepts of salmon farming, to the development of pond culture in rural economies, such as that of Myanmar, which has seen fish production increase by an estimated 250 per cent in a decade.

This month we focus on innovation in a special feature but, in fact, on just about every page there are new ideas, new products, new technology or new ways of producing fish. In Brussels last month, innovation was key to the buoyant seafood expo, the annual launchpad for all that is novel and groundbreaking.

And innovation is behind the success of companies such as Scottish Sea Farms and Aurora Marine, both profiled in this issue, and both embracing the trailblazing ethos that characterises the industry.

Looking ahead, the World Aquaculture Society is meeting in Cape Town in June to highlight the advance of African fish farming, and in August, Norway will host the biggest yet Aqua Nor exhibition, already a sell-out, with a significantly sized Scottish stand this year. From around the globe, we will bring you news of what’s new.

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Meet the team

Contact us

Editorial Advisory Board: Steve Bracken, Scott Landsburgh, Hervé Migaud, Patrick Smith and Jim Treasurer Editor: Jenny Hjul Designer: Andrew Balahura Advertising Manager: William Dowds wdowds@fishupdate.com Advertising Executives: Dave Edler dedler@fishupdate.com Scott Binnie sbinnie@fishupdate.com Publisher: Alister Bennett

Tel: +44(0) 131 551 1000 Fax: +44(0) 131 551 7901 email: jhjul@fishupdate.com

Cover: Jim Gallagher, managing director of Scottish Sea Farms, at Lismore North farm.

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Welcome - may.indd 3

46-47 Innovation

Desert expansion

48-49 Innovation

Prize development

16 SSPO

Tackling gill health

17 Comment

50-51 Innovation

Phil Thomas

Feed breakthroughs

18-19 ASSG

52-53 Innovation

Janet Brown

Funding the future

54-55 Innovation

New product platform

20 Comment Martin Jaffa

Fish Farmer is now on Facebook and Twitter

Contents – Editor’s Welcome

22 BTA

Doug McLeod

56-57 Innovation Ace stunners

58-59 Innovation

Pioneering genetics

24-29 Farm visit

Scottish Sea Farms

30-33 Net cleaning Aurora Marine

62 Processing News Seachill suitors

34-45 Seafood Expo Brussels round-up

63-65 Aqua Source Directory

Find all you need for the industry

66 Opinion

By Nick Joy

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08/05/2017 12:30:58

United Kingdom News

NEWS...

Scotland performs well for Marine Harvest MARINE Harvest Scotland recorded a big improvement in performance in the first quarter of this year, with 18,000 tonnes at €3.00/kg, up from 12,620 tonnes in 2016 at an average EBIT/kg of €0.68 per kg.

The total harvest volume for Marine Harvest ASA in the first quarter of the year was 84,000 tonnes, and operational EBIT was approximately €215 million, up from €112 million in the same quarter last year.

Marine Harvest, which had its best year ever in 2016, said

Above: The hatchery development at Inchmore pictured in week 42

it was proud of its accomplishments, but concerned about the biological challenges, in particular regarding sea lice.

The Oslo listed group saw revenue in

2016 rise to €3,510 million from €3,112 million in 2015.

Operational EBIT was €700 million up from €347 million, mainly as a result of increased prices driven by

Feed plant opportunities for firms MARINE Harvest invited local firms to a meeting in Skye at the end of April to discuss possible opportunities at its new feed plant.

Scotland’s biggest salmon farmer and some of the main contractors for the Altanavaig project in Kyleakin hosted the event in

Kyleakin Community Hall, saying they were interested in speaking with any businesses that could help with supplies and services as the development takes shape.

The £93 million project, which secured planning approval from Highland Council in

Above: Three weeks into the building work at Kyleakin

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February, is expected to be completed next year.

It includes construction of factory buildings 40m high, a 60m chimney stack and an extension of the quarry pier near the Skye Bridge. Marine Harvest has said the development will create at least 55 full-time jobs.

strong demand and decline in supply.

Tonnage fell from 420,148 tonnes in 2015 to 380,621 tonnes last year. In Scotland, output decreased by 5,600 tonnes (3.7 per cent), and in Norway it dropped 56,800 tonnes (5.1 per cent),

mainly related to biological challenges resulting in lower production levels and reduced survival.

In Scotland, operational EBIT for 2016 was €41.1 million compared to €17.5 million in 2015.

Operational EBIT per kg was €0.91 in 2016 compared to €0.35 in 2015.

Biological challenges, especially related to sea lice and gill issues, caused increased costs and reduced survival in both 2016 and in 2015. However, increased costs and reduced harvest volume were more than offset by higher prices.

The EBIT for Scottish salmon was €117.2 million for

the year compared to €15.2 million in 2015, and EBIT per kg was €2.60 in 2016 compared to €0.30 in 2015.

However, costs for the year increased by 22.9 per cent, due to biological challenges.

Incident based mortality amounted to €6.5 million, mainly related to sea lice treatment losses and gill issues.

Incident based mortality amounted to €8.1 million in 2015.

Marine Harvest continued to expand its freshwater facilities, with larger smolt plants, including at Inchmore in Scotland, which will produce 4.5 million smolts, and 6.5 million parr when it is completed early next year.

Scottish salmon exports up 17% EXPORTS of Scottish farmed salmon rose 17 per cent by value last year to £451 million, with a big recovery in sales into the European Union, up by more than a third on 2015.

The new figures, from HM Revenue and Customs, show that the tonnage of exported salmon fell from 100,000 tonnes in 2014 to 83,400 tonnes in 2015. And last year, it fell by 10 per cent, to 74,600 tonnes.

The decline is largely due to a fall in the supply and a reduced average size, caused by sea lice and disease.

But the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO) claims recent evidence suggests that fish health is improving, and it expects an increase of 15,000 to 20,000

tonnes in production this year. If that happens, it could make 2017 a record export year.

Around 52 per cent of salmon farmed in Scotland is consumed in the UK. Exports into the EU were up 37 per cent to £204 million last year. France is the biggest single EU market.

The export value fell from £494 million in 2014, to £386 million last year, mainly because of the collapse of the Norwegian kroner, which made imports from Norway cheaper.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:32:31

All the latest industry news from the UK

Aquaculture scope in Swansea lagoon A RANGE of marine species could be farmed off the coast of Wales, within the proposed Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon, according to a new report.

The sheltered, man-made lagoon, to be built out from the coast and enclosing a bank of hydro turbines, has strong aquaculture potential for farming mussels, oysters, scallops, clams, cockles and seaweed, the industry body Seafish found.

But trials would be needed to see how the shellfish and seaweed would grow inside the proposed development, the world’s first tidal lagoon power plant.

It would be the first time that offshore marine renewable energy generation has been combined with aquaculture, says the report, which was led by Martin Syvret (Aquafish Solutions) and Dr Andrew Woolmer (Salacia-Marine) in collaboration with industry partners.

The report, ‘Aquaculture Opportunities for Enclosed Marine Water Bodies – Tidal Lagoon Swansea Bay Case Study’, uses Swansea Bay as a case study to examine wider opportunities for aquaculture in and around enclosed marine water bodies, such as ports, natural lagoons, estuaries, sea lochs

accompanies the report.

The Seafish investigation also created a generic shellfish hatchery design aimed at tackling the shortage of shellfish seed that can be raised to adulthood by commercial shellfish farmers, an acknowledged bottleneck in the sector.

It is hoped that the industry will be able to use the hatchery design to help increase the supply of seed and boost production.

Lee Cocker, aquaculture manager at Seafish, said: ‘The prospect of siting aquaculture within an area such as the world’s first tidal lagoon renewable power development is undoubtedly exciting.

‘However, the findings of the project are also pertinent to other offshore renewables sites such as wind farms.

‘The project helps provide an overview of aquaculture species and techniques that could be considered in other marine enclosed water bodies, and the hatchery aspect has the potential to support a more Above: Aquaculture potential in tidal lagoon general expansion of seed availability for UK and managed retreats. aquaculture.’

An Aquaculture Site Scoping Matrix, which Construction of the lagoon, expected to can be used by industry to identify further begin in 2018, will take four years, with the potential locations for aquaculture operations, first power generated in year three.

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08/05/2017 12:32:57

United Kingdom News

Loch Duart wins business award SCOTTISH salmon farmer Loch Duart won the Food and Drink Company of the Year at Scottish Business Insider’s Made in Scotland Awards.

Announced at a ceremony at the Glasgow Science Centre, Loch Duart was chosen for its innovative approaches, which include low density farming and a focus on sustainability, environmental stewardship and fish welfare.

The award noted that Loch Duart, based in north west Scotland, has a hard won reputation for extraordinary tasting salmon, which has been achieved by building the brand among top chefs, leading hotels, restaurants and retailers in the

Above: Alban Denton (left) and Ken Symon, Scottish Business Insider editor

UK and further afield.

Loch Duart managing director Alban Denton said: ‘Food and Drink Company of the Year! What an accolade! Very fitting because in our remote and beautiful part of Scotland, that’s what we do - produce

a fine food which is the most delicious tasting salmon.

‘There’s a whole bunch of fine people who make this happen. Operations, technical, finance and sales. This award is for each and every one of them.’

MASTS secures five more years’ funding THE Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland (MASTS) has secured a further five years of funding from the Scottish Funding Council, it was announced last month MASTS was set up in 2009 to bring together Scotland’s marine science expertise within a consortium which encourages better communication, collaboration and coordination among the marine research community.

MASTS’ initial budget was £17.9million, augmented by £57.5 million in contributions from members, and since then it has attracted a further £48.7 million.

The group brings together expert advice and ground breaking research from across the country, and has proven especially useful in fostering links with a wide range of marine based industries.

MASTS also has a graduate school, which currently has 47 students, and 31 alumni.

A highlight of the MASTS year is the Annual Science Meeting,

Above: Professor David Paterson

the largest gathering of marine science experts in the UK, regularly attracting 450 delegates.

MASTS executive director Professor David Paterson said: ‘It is fantastic news that the Scottish Funding Council has agreed to support the Marine Alliance for Science and Technology for Scotland for a further five-year period.

‘This support recognises the importance of the marine environment and the successful work of MASTS to support the research, policy and management essential to the Scottish government’s desire to maintain clean and healthy seas.’

Call to halt wild wrasse ‘gold rush’

Above: Wrasse have a complicated life cycle

THE Angling Trust has called for an immediate suspension of the wrasse ‘gold rush’ that supplies live, wild caught fish to salmon farmers in Scotland.

Some 89 tonnes of wrasse, used as cleaner fish to control sea lice on salmon, were caught in 2015, much of this in the inshore waters of the south-west of England, according to government figures from the Marine Management Organisation (MMO).

Attempts are being made to supply the aquaculture market with captive bred wrasse but unlike lumpfish, another effective cleaner fish, the complicated life cycle of wrasse means farmed supplies are still restricted, though increasing.

The industry in Scotland continues to make a huge investment in wrasse hatcheries, in Scotland and also in Wales.

The Angling Trust claims that the focus on the south west fishery is the result of depleted stocks in Scotland but admits this information is based only on ‘anecdotal evidence’.

Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, said: ‘We are not sure there is a sustainability issue for wild wrasse; however, it is our intention to commission a data analysis of the status of wild wrasse stocks to support the sustainable future use of wild wrasse.’

US seal rule ‘unclear’ says minister THE Scottish government is seeking clarification from the US over its legislation restricting seafood imports from countries that don’t comply with strict marine mammal protection criteria.

The recent US rule, which could affect export sales of Scottish salmon if farmers shoot predatory seals, is due to come into

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force in January 2022.

In response to a question from the Green Party in Holyrood, Roseanna Cunningham, the Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, said: ‘The precise implications of the regulations remain unclear in a number of areas and for many countries.

‘We intend to seek further clarification, along with the United Kingdom government and the European Union, through discussions with the US government in response to its request for information.

‘The EU is considering a number of approaches, including a joint response to

the US, a reversion to the World Trade Organisation and, potentially, a request for more time to respond to the request for information.’

The minister said it was a matter for individual companies to decide whether to apply for a licence to shoot seals under the Marine (Scotland) Act 2010.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:33:36

All the latest industry news from the UK

Device to breed disease-resistant algae A TOOL that could help produce disease resistant algae is to be deployed by the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS).

The high tech piece of lab equipment will be used to measure biomass and determine which algal cultures are resistant to different diseases. This, in turn, will help Oban based SAMS breed seaweed strains most resistant to diseases.

It is a novel application for the instrument, called a NEPHELOstar, which was delivered recently to Dr Claire Gachon, senior lecturer in molecular phycology at SAMS, by representatives from BMG Labtech.

Dr Gachon said: ‘We will use this state-ofthe-art equipment to identify algae that are resistant to disease.

‘We will then correlate the data with genotype information to find out which strains

are the most suitable for breeding seaweed.

‘This is important research for the seaweed industry globally; just like in land based agriculture, disease can be devastating to the production line.’

This pioneering work is part of the GENIALG project, which aims to improve the genetic resources available to breeders for sustainable, large-scale kelp farming throughout the EU. Catherine Wark, applications and business development manager at BMG Labtech, said: ‘This device is typically used by drug companies, so the work at SAMS is certainly a novel use of the technology.’

Dr Gachon believes that, beyond algae, the technology could become a mainstream tool for non-invasive measurement of biomass of many different types of aquatic organisms.

Stirling talk from former students EUROPHARMA’S Fraser Howarth, sales support administrator of the company’s Fishguard product, and Sean Black, fish health adviser, attended the recent Aquaculture Careers day held at their alma mater, the University of Stirling’s Institute of Aquaculture. They spoke to students about the importance of making connections in the industry and the array of career prospects available in aquaculture in Scotland.

Their presentation consisted of an introduction to both Europharma and

Above: Sean Black and Fraser Howarth

Fishguard, a diagnostic fish health service that helps prevent, diagnose and treat fish health issues; and Supersmolt, a state-

of-the-art monitoring service.

‘Presenting at the Institute of Aquaculture was a great opportunity to meet

and speak with the people who are going to be the future of the industry,’ said Howarth. ‘It was great being back at our old stomping ground as we know exactly what the students are experiencing. Sean and I both started our careers at Europharma following graduation so understand what students need to know in terms of stepping on the ladder of employment.’

The conference heard from a variety of aquaculture interests, from vets and fish producers to environmental bodies.

Above: Dr Claire Gachon (left) with BMG Labtech

representative Natacha Pavone

Tributes to former Seafood Scotland CEO FORMER Seafood Scotland chief executive Dr Jon Harman has died following a short illness.

He was more recently a former trade relations director in Northern Europe for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), tasked with promoting Alaskan seafood.

He graduated from London University with a degree in biology, and had worked in the seafood industry for 35 years covering all sectors, including pelagic, white fish and shellfish.

Having established the trade association Seafood Scotland, he then went on to become a director of Seafish UK. He had recently retired from Lotus PR. Rebecca Wilson, director of ASMI Northern Europe, said: ‘With his extensive seafood experience, we were proud to have Jon as our trade ambassador. His expertise and extensive industry network were highly valued by us and everyone in the Alaska seafood industry.’

Scottish salmon on excellence shortlist TWICE Smoked Scottish Salmon produced by Associated Seafoods Ltd (ASL) has been shortlisted for a Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Award.

ASL was one of only four businesses shortlisted for an award in the Own Label Product of the

Year category, out of a record number of 272 entries across all 22 categories. The product was developed by the company’s master smokers for Marks & Spencer.

Neil Greig, commercial director at ASL, said: ‘M&S Twice Smoked Scottish Salmon has been very well

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received by consumers since its launch and has a lovely flavour with a delicious hint of smokiness.

‘We are thrilled that the quality of this product has been recognised by the judges at the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards.’

Other seafood com-

panies on the Excellence Award shortlists include Gigha Halibut, Loch Fyne Oysters and Luss Smokehouse.

Loch Duart and the Scottish Salmon Company are shortlisted for the food service award. The winners will be announced on May 18 at the Edinburgh EICC.

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08/05/2017 12:33:56

European News

NEWS...

Norwegian seafood exports slow in April THE two-year long surge in Norwegian seafood exports of all types was brought to a halt last month. The April figures show that 151,000 tonnes of seafood worth NOK 6.8 billion were sold overseas - down 23 per cent in volume and seven per cent in value compared to April 2016.

However, sales for 2017 so far are still up in value. Volumes for the first four months remain roughly the same as last year’s at 886,000 tonnes worth

Above: Norwegian exports to the EU have decreased

NOK 31 billion. The value increased by NOK 2.3 billion or eight per cent.

Asbjørn Warvik Rørtveit, director of market

Fish farming boosts Faroes population IT is a country whose population has just passed the 50,000 mark – around the size of Inverness in Scotland – but the Faroe Islands has published an upbeat budget, thanks in large part to its growing fish Above: Kristina Háfoss farming industry.

The finance minister, Kristina Háfoss has pledged to put more money into fishery and aquaculture research as part of her fiscal strategy. The government expects a surplus of 330 million Danish kroners next year.

She said that with an unemployment rate of only two per cent and a growth of seven to eight per cent, the Faroese economy was performing exceptionally well.

Sea farming, pelagic fishing and construction industries had made the most progress and the population had passed the 50,000 mark at the beginning of April thanks to fewer emigrating and more expats returning.

The prime minister, Aksel V. Johannesen, said: ‘Reaching 50,000 is a true milestone...

Exit Faroes has now become Enter Faroes.

Many who have studied and lived abroad are returning.’

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insight at the Norwegian Seafood Council, said: ‘The decline in seafood exports in April is mainly due to a shift in Easter, which

again explains some of the decline in export volumes for our important seafood products.’

The country exported 60,000 tonnes of

salmon worth NOK 4.9 billion in April. The reduction in the volume of exports to the EU was 9,400 tonnes.

The value of salmon exports is broadly at the same level as April 2016. So far this year, Norway has exported 305,000 tonnes of salmon with a total value of NOK 21 billion.

The average price for fresh whole salmon rose to NOK 63.59 per kg in April 2017 compared with NOK 57.11 per kg just over a year ago. Poland, France

and the United States were the largest export markets in April.

Paul Aandahl, analyst with the Norwegian Seafood Council, said: ‘Strong price growth compared with the same period last year has led to a value added of NOK 2.7 billion or 15 per cent for Norwegian salmon exports so far this year.

‘A trend we have seen over time is that exports to the EU are reduced, while exports to overseas markets have increased.’

Norway reports dramatic drop in fish escapes NORWAY is claiming success in reducing the number of fish escaping from its fish farms – thanks to an industry wide effort.

According to the Norwegian directorate of fisheries, 126,000 salmon and 62,000 rainbow trout escaped last year compared to 170,000 salmon and 84,000 trout in 2015.

So far this year fish farms have reported very few escaped fish. The latest figures suggest there have been six reports of escapes involving only eight salmon but 3,000 rainbow trout.

Tarald Sivertsen, head of the escapes committee at Seafood Norway, said a large systematic effort by

common cause of escapes but now technical failures seem to have taken over.

All aquaculture sites are required to monitor their fish and installations daily.

The Aquaculture Operations Regulations state that site managers are obliged to have the necessary knowledge to prevent, detect and limit escapes. well in this area.’ the industry was now Two years ago new The industry believes regulations on joint bringing some positive it is gradually winning responsibility for results. the battle against one recapturing escaped ‘Our vision is zero of the biggest probescapes from Norwefish in rivers were ingian aquaculture facili- lems in aquaculture troduced. In the same Last year 50 per cent of year the aquaculture ties. But when things escaped trout and 10 go wrong we also industry association per cent of salmon that for escaped fish was put great effort into catching fish that have got away were success- established to enforce these regulations. fully recaptured. escaped. It is a dePoorly secured drains Training was also manding process, but stepped up. used to be the most our measures worked

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:34:54

All the latest industry news from Europe

Grieg CEO upbeat but warns of risks THE CEO of Grieg Seafood has delivered an upbeat message to shareholders and staff in the company’s annual report, but he has also cautioned that salmon production carries substantial risks.

Andreas Kvame says these risks relate to a number of areas including biology, price fluctuations, international trade conditions and changes in external conditions.

‘Hence our risk management procedures are under constant supervision and during this year we will do everything in our power to preserve a stable and secure production platform.’

Kvame said that 2016 provided a great opportunity to demonstrate what the company stood for.

‘An important factor in our success is the strong global demand for healthy and tasty salmon. On several

Above: Andreas Kvame indicators, 2016 marked and all-time high in Grieg Seafood’s history.

‘All quarterly reports represent progress, and by the end of the year the group reached an EBIT per kg at NOK 18 [compared to NOK 0.7 in 2015].

‘The Norway region reached even higher prices, prompting our earlier statement there’s more to gain in Norway.’

He said about 30 per cent of last year’s sales passed through fixed price con-

tracts and that ratio would increase this year.

‘Fixed price contracts fit Grieg Seafood’s long term sales targets and simultaneously make up a good strategy for Ocean Quality, the sales company for all our regions.’

Kvame also outlined Grieg’s smolt strategy.

‘Our project to reduce the smolt cycle in the sea from 24 to 18 months in our Shetland region has been initiated. We expect that project will improve our sustainability and strengthen the company.’

He explained that shortening the fish’s total stay in the sea should reduce the mortality rate, leading to increased production.

Grieg’s 2016 turnover was NOK 6.54 billion with a total harvest of 64,726 tonnes gutted weight. The EBIT for Shetland last year was NOK 176 million.

Rise in Irish production AQUACULTURE production in Ireland increased by nine per cent last year to reach 44,000 tonnes, according to the Irish Seafood Board, BIM. The total value rose 13 per cent to €167 million at first point of sale in 2016, up by €19 million from the previous year, driven mainly by salmon and gigas oysters.

Salmon production was said to have had an ‘extremely successful year’ with production reaching 16,300 tonnes, valued at €105 million, an increase of four per cent and 13 per cent respectively. Salmon hatchery facilities also produced stock valued at €4 million.

Production of gigas oysters increased to almost 10,000 tonnes, up from just over 9,000 tonnes in 2015, with the value up from €35 million to €41million.

Gigas oyster production now accounts for 25 per cent of Ireland’s overall aquaculture production by value, and 74 per cent of the value of the aquaculture sector.

BIM’s annual survey showed that the industry provides more than 1,900 jobs, up six per cent, with the oyster industry the largest employer, employing 1,300 people.

Novel species such as perch, abalone and urchin continue to be in production at stable levels. BIM also announced the appointment of Jim O’Toole as its new chief executive.

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08/05/2017 12:35:10

European News

Investment in innovation increases 95% MARINE Harvest increased investment in R&D by 95 per cent last year to €51.3 million, due to expanded activity in general and increased stocking at the Centre for Aquaculture Competence.

The company joined with SINTEF Ocean and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences to establish the Blue Revolution Centre, and has created several concepts for development licences.

Its closed containment ‘Egg’ and ‘Donut’ concepts both qualified for further evaluation by the Norwegian Department of Fisheries.

It is currently testing the second batch of fish in a semi-closed floating facility, the Neptun.

This is a 21,000m3 floating tank with water pumped in from 30m depth to prevent sea lice and stabilising temperature.

‘Since the floating semi-closed technology is still very new, we are focusing on testing several different concepts, to be sure we select the best one once the technology is taken to a larger scale,’ the company said in its annual report.

‘We have therefore applied for development licences to test the following

Russian trade talks resume

concepts: the Egg, FOLLOWING her successful Chinese trade mission (see World the Marine Donut and News), Norway’s industry minister Monica Maeland visited Russia to the Ship. try to improve relations in ‘A final new concept the hope that seafood exthat we intend to test ports will one day resume. out, is to widen the Norway and Russia share area of fish farming, and jointly administer the by enabling farming Barents Sea, arguably the in rougher conditions world’s richest cod and in more open seas. haddock grounds.

‘The Beck cage is a Trade between Norway submersible sea pen, and Russia was reduced which can be lowered as a result of the crisis during the roughest in Ukraine, but there is weather. If successstill ongoing cooperation ful, it could potentialin many sectors. The ly open up new areas meeting, in the Norwefor farming. gian-Russian economic ‘Testing and doccommission in Moscow, umenting potential is important in this connew farming systems text, said Mæland. in order to ensure further sustainable Right: Monica Maeland growth of our company and industry is we do not think that innovation focus.’ given high priority improve its operaour existing facilities To this end, Marine within the R&D and tional performance will become redunHarvest is developbecause they offer ing a generation of greater control of pa- dant in the future. new materials, pen rameters such as wa- On the contrary, we designs and construc- ter quality and waste see opportunities to combine the present tion methods that, it disposal, as well as with the future and hopes, will revolugreater protection make the best of tionise the industry. against sea lice. both, particularly Among these devel‘Although we are with our new/expandopments are closed developing and ed land based smolt containment systems, testing closed confacilities.’ which will enable it to tainment solutions,

Norwegian farmers in £143m merger TWO medium sized businesses in the Norwegian aquaculture sector have joined forces - and say they are ready to challenge the big

companies. NTS ASA has entered into an agreement to purchase all shares in the fish farmer Midt-Norsk Havbruk AS in a share deal worth around

Above: Ambitions for growth

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MH in Connemara deal

MARINE Harvest Ireland has reportedly NOK 1.43 billion (£143 has also broken into signed a new salmon the Canadian market million) farm arrangement with its well boats.

A statement said with a Connemara Meanwhile, MNH has based aquaculture NTS and MNH had 10 ordinary salmon now become ‘a enterprise called the farming licences, two Mannin Bay Salmon strong aquaculture group with competent R & D licences and Company, in a deal expects production owners who have a that could prove to be common commitment of 15,000 tonnes this a major boost for the to preserve and devel- year. region.

It has control over op coastal values’.

The farm, at Berthe entire value chain traghboy Bay, will be The newly merged for salmon, with business said it has hatcheries, cleaner ambitions for further fish production, and a growth along the processing operation.

Norwegian coast Its investment and is exploring new earlier this year in the markets. new Icelandic farm, NTS is one of the Fiskeldi Austfjarda, largest suppliers of fits in well with NTS’s well boats and other ambitious growth services to the aquaambitions. culture industry, and

a five-year programme employing eight people, with the possibility of further jobs in processing.

Initially, more than half a million smolts will be put to sea at Bertraghboy Bay. Based in Donegal, Marine Harvest Ireland produces around 10,000 tonnes of salmon a year.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:37:04

All the latest industry news from Europe

Record performance for Baltic fish farmer PRFOODS, one of the Baltic’s fastest growing seafood and fish farming businesses, has unveiled a record performance in 2016.

The company is engaged in the production and processing of fish products in Finland and Estonia, and fish farming in Sweden and Finland.

Trout farmed in the lakes of Sweden and in the archipelago in the Turku area in Finland, as well as salmon imported from Norway, are processed in the production facilities of Heimon Kala OY in Renko, Finland, and in Vettel OÜ on the island Saaremaa, Estonia.

PRFoods said in a statement: ‘We exceeded our revenue prognosis by €2.4 million and profit before

taxes and depreciation (EBITDA) increased by 28.7 per cent or €0.6 million.

‘The company achieved revenue of €47.4 million (Q4 sales were €16.9 million), but we also faced very rapid increase in raw material prices well into Q4.’

Last year was a successful one for fish farming operations, said the company. The season started much earlier in Finland and Sweden, and good climatic conditions lasted throughout the farming season.

‘We improved the quality of feeds and feeding technologies, which resulted higher growth in biomass.’

At the end of 2016, biomass was 16.7 per cent higher (1,418 tonnes) on a year on year basis.

Above: Baltic potential

Iceland ups its stake in Norway ICELAND’S Samherji Group has increased its stake in the Norwegian integrated fishing company Nergård.

In a joint move, Samherji raised its holdings to 39.9 per cent while the Norwegian salmon and white fish processor Norsk Sjømat raised its stake to 60.1 per cent.

The two companies are looking to invest in the processing, manufacturing and development of new white fish products in Northern Norway.

Nergård is an integrated fishery group whose business activities include catching, processing and sales.

It is also Northern Norway’s second largest in this field, with more than 470 employees.

Norsk Sjømat has been a co-owner of Nergård since 2010

and controlled about 42 per cent of the company before the new acquisition.

Samherji, which has a large fishing fleet and processing operation in Iceland, Europe and the UK, became a co-owner in 2014 when it took a 22 per cent stake.

Norsk Sjømat CEO Per Magne Grøndahl said: ‘We want Nergård AS to develop from being a supplier of raw materials and semi-finished products to becoming a manufacturer of finished products.’

Norsk Sjømat is based in Stranda in Sunnmøre county and has more than 300 employees there.

The company has more than 30 years’ experience in the fish processing industry.

Its recipe for success has been high product

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European News.indd 11

yield in the processing of salmon and the continuous development of new products.

Now this experience and expertise will help to develop similar solutions for the processing of white fish.

Grøndahl added: ‘Salmon companies used to be the only ones who could offer stable fish deliveries throughout the year.

‘We see a lot of opportunities in how Nergård has set up their infrastructure to now be able to deliver fresh cod 365 days a year.

‘Soon Nergård will, for example, be able to offer cod with sashimi quality. That will literally open a whole new world for cod products.’

Samherji has been in the forefront of value added processing and operates two filet factories.

Air carriers target Norwegian salmon THE growing demand around the world for Norwegian salmon has recently brought two major international air carriers to Oslo.

Emirates SkyCargo, the world’s largest international cargo airline, is expanding its presence in Scandinavia with the launch of a new weekly freighter service from Oslo to Dubai.

And AirBridgeCargo Airlines (ABC) has launched a twice weekly Boeing 747 freighter operation from Oslo.

Worldwide demand for Norwegian seafood, and especially salmon, continues to make a significant and growing contribution to the country’s economy.

Norway now exports

220,000 tonnes of seafood a year, 600 tonnes a day, using air cargo services to Asia and North America.

The service operated by an Emirates Skycargo Boeing 777 freighter aircraft has the capacity to carry just over 100 tonnes of cargo, much of which will be farmed salmon. This includes

more than 15,000 square metres of temperature controlled storage space.

Meanwhile, Georges Biwer, at AirBridgeCargo, said: ‘Norwegian salmon is preferred by consumers all over the world and exporters rely on the speed and reliability of air cargo to ensure their seafood is of the highest quality.’

Rafferty to leave Skretting SKRETTING boss Steven Rafferty has resigned, it was announced last month.

According to reports, he will stand down in September.

Rafferty worked with Marine Harvest from 1993, and remained with the company when it was acquired by Nutreco (Skretting’s owner).

He had roles in Scotland, Chile and the US, rising to chief farming officer in 2005. He left to join Nutreco in 2012, after it had sold Marine Harvest.

The Scot has been based in Stavanger in Norway as managing director of Skretting Global Salmon and Fish Feed Southern

Europe and as a member of the Nutreco executive committee.

But he said he will relocate if necessary and hopes to stay within the aquaculture sector.

He is believed to be the highest paid seafood executive in Norway, with a total remuneration of NOK 9 million in 2015.

Above: Steven Rafferty (left) and Skretting’s Alex Obach at AquaVision 2016

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08/05/2017 12:37:24

World News

NEWS...

Norway and China agree trade talks

Above: Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg visits the Great Wall of China during her trade mission.

NORWAY is to start talks on a free trade deal with China before the end of the year, it was announced last month.

This was the main outcome of a high

level trade mission to Beijing led by Norway’s Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

Industry minister Monica Mæland said the two countries have agreed to trigger

negotiations within the next five months, although it is not known how long it will take for such a deal to be finalised.

She said: ‘China is a trade superpower

and a very important partner for Norway.

Increased private sector cooperation will strengthen our economy.’

This was a powerful trade mission by

any standards, but especially for a small country (population 5.2 million).

The Oslo team took 230 delegates, mainly seafood related. And they met more than 1,000 Chinese businessmen.

Premier Solberg held a 40-minute meeting in the People’s Great Hall in Beijing with China’s president Xi Jinping to lay the groundwork for free trade negotiations.

But the message was clear: China wants Norwegian fish, particularly salmon, trout and cod, and Norway is ready to supply it.

Relations between the two countries

have been strained since 2010 when the then Norwegian government pledged support for the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

Norwegian seafood exports dropped to a trickle, but relations thawed after the two countries restored diplomatic ties in December.

Norwegian seafood leaders believe that within a few years their exports to China could reach two billion kroners. In 2010 Norway exported 14,000 tonnes of salmon to China, but last year that figure was just 3,000 tonnes.

Chinese to build salmon farm concept Marine Harvest ‘lines up Chinese e-deal’ THE Norwegian company Ocean Aquafarms has signed a letter of intent with a Chinese shipyard, potentially worth US $250 million (NOK two billion), to build and supply its innovative fish farming concept known as the Hex Box. The letter was signed by Heidi Baugstø, chairman of Ocean Aquafarms, and Wang Jianzhong, CEO of the shipyard, CIMC Raffles Offshore, in Beijing during Norway’s trade mission to China. It was part of a

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ceremony where 14 leading Norwegian companies signed agreements with their Chinese partners.

The Hex Box is a floating rig with a huge pen in the middle, designed by Stavanger based Ocean Aquafarms, which is owned by ocean rig veterans Heidi Baugstø and Stephen Adshead.

It will enable salmon farming in exposed areas with up to 10m wave heights, potentially opening up new opportunities for producers to expand outside the fjords.

Based on offshore technology, the Hex Box, about 90m in diameter, is the first such product designed for the Norwegian salmon market. The company has applied to the Directorate of Fisheries for 13 development licences for 10,000 tonnes of fish.

Beijing is also thought to be planning to develop a number of huge fish farms off its coastline.

NORWEGIAN salmon may soon be sold through one of China’s huge online ‘stores’. Marine Harvest is reported to be working with Alibaba Group Holding, China’s biggest e-commerce company, to sell salmon on the internet.

The Alibaba Group has been a global giant in online trading for some time and had a turnover last year of over 100 billion kroners (around £9 billion). It is owned

by Jack Ma, one of China’s richest men. He welcomed Erna Solberg, Norway’s prime minis-

ter, to his company’s vast company base in eastern China recently.

He told Solberg: ‘We can now deliver goods 24 hours a day throughout China.’

Solberg and Ma have met in the past as both are involved in UN sustainability work, but this was the first time a foreign head of government has visited Alibaba.

The Alibaba Group,

which employs more than 35,000 people, has a turnover higher than those of eBay and Amazon together. Last year it had over 430 million customers.

Meanwhile, Norwegian investor Hogne I. Tyssoy said his fund could well be investing in Chinese companies in the future and he was interested in seeing what opportunities are in store for Norwegian fish farmers in China.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:38:34

World News

Potential for by-product in feed IFFO, the Marine Ingredients Organisation, said an estimated 35 million tonnes of raw material could be available for marine ingredients production, should all by-product be collected.

This increases to a total of 45 million tonnes being available in 10 years’ time, with the increase principally coming from the growth in aquaculture and the availability of by-product from processing aquaculture species, IFFO said in its first annual report, published recently.

Currently, nearly 20 million tonnes of raw material are used annually in the production of marine ingredients.

Future availability of fish oil is not predicted to rise proportionately, as a large proportion of aquaculture product is likely to have a low oil yield, with freshwater species dominating growth in Asia.

The findings came from a project on by-product use in fishmeal and fish oil production, commissioned in 2014 and led by Professor Dave Little at Stirling University.

The project was to provide an analysis of raw material availability and estimates for the global quantity of fishmeal and fish oil that could be produced assuming that all by-product could be utilised as raw material.

No permits yet in Gulf of Mexico

Above: Increased availability of by-product in fish feed.

The figures provided by this research will help to inform discussions about the future development of the industry, and are important in emphasising the increasing contribution that by-product will make to raw material supply.

The organisation’s report also gives summaries of core areas of IFFO’s work, including stakeholder engagement, technical projects and market research.

In 2016, IFFO expanded its methods of data collection by gathering production and/or trade annual data for 109 countries; monthly data for 30 countries and weekly data for around 10 countries.

Data is collected from multiple sources to ensure accuracy, with the most important source being IFFO’s members, which represent more than 50 per cent of the total world production and between 75 per cent and 80 per cent of the total annual trade of marine ingredients worldwide.

IFFO presented the report at its annual meeting this month, in Barcelona.

Tassal in new tussle with Huon

Above: No one has applied for Gulf of Mexico licences yet.

THERE have been no applications for fish farming permits in the Gulf of Mexico, despite the necessary legislation being in place for more than a year, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The issue was raised at a meeting during Aquaculture America in San

Antonio, Texas, reported Aquaculture North America.

Michael Rubino, director of the Office of Aquaculture at NOAA and a panellist at the meeting, said a lawsuit that the agency is facing is ‘delaying people from applying’.

Neil Sims, president of the Ocean Stewards Institute and co-founder of Kampachi Farms,

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World news.indd 13

said that as a potential investor he was intimidated by the ‘strident opposition from fishermen’ who would be displaced by the buffer zones around the facilities where they can’t go, and the ‘convoluted, multi-layered permitting process’ involving six agencies’. ‘No one has done this before, and so everyone is fearful.’

TASMANIA’S Environment Protection Authority (EPA) has blocked salmon giant Tassal’s plan to dredge the seabed under its farms in Macquarie Harbour.

Rival producer Huon Aquaculture sought an injunction to stop the dredging, saying it had evidence Tassal was setting up the necessary equipment, according to Australian media sources.

Huon argued the operation could ‘severely compromise’ fish welfare and environmental conditions in its own leases in the harbour.

The EPA was in receipt of a draft proposal from Tassal but hours after Huon’s injunction the regulator announced the dredging ‘should not proceed at this point’.

‘I have advised Tassal today that the trial should not proceed given the uncertainty about the technique and unknown potential impacts on the environment in Macquarie Harbour,’ EPA chief Wes Ford said.

Huon said the proposed operation, which aimed to suck up solid fish waste from the seabed, was risky for all parties farming fish in the harbour.

‘We are not aware of anywhere else in the world that dredging under salmon

pens is used in a production setting,’ Huon Aquaculture executive director Frances Bender said.

‘The potential impact to us, a neighbouring operator, risks tens of millions of dollars of production fish.’

Huon Aquaculture described the technology Tassal planned to use in the Franklin lease, adjacent to a World Heritage Area (WHA), as ‘unproven and risky ... in a compromised waterway’.

Huon’s injunction was the latest episode of its battle with Tassal in Macquarie Harbour, exacerbated when Bender complained in a television documentary about the poor state of the harbour.

Tassal hit back at Huon Aquaculture, accusing it of trying to play industry regulator.

Above: Environmental impact.

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08/05/2017 12:38:54

World news

BC expands

farm tours

Growing public interest in where food comes from

B

RITISH Columbia salmon farmers are expanding their programme of public farm tours this summer in response to demand.

Organised by the BC Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA), this year’s tours will include dates in June, July and August.

Tour participants will have the opportunity to visit a farm and learn more about how the industry works, ‘while enjoying a boat ride across the Johnstone Strait – taking in the beautiful scenery and the chance to see marine wildlife’, said the BCSFA. ‘We’re excited to open up our expanded tour programme to local and international participants during the next few months,’ said Jeremy Dunn, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers’ Association.

‘Not only will participants get a valuable inside look into sustainable salmon farming operations in BC, but they will also have the opportunity to connect with farmers who take pride in growing the world’s best fish, and they will learn first-hand how our farmers are helping to meet the growing demand for healthy food.’

The BCSFA has been offering public tours for about six years, said Dunn, and each summer they take out a few hundred people of all age ranges, from 10 upwards. For the last couple of years they have partnered with the Vancouver Island Visitors Bureau.

Above: Jeremy Dunn

Above: Sxxxxxx

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BC Tours.indd 14

All scheduled tours, limited to 21 people per tour, depart from Campbell River at 8:30am and last about six hours. They cost CAD $60 and include lunch served on the farm.

‘Our members view it as a very important aspect of community relations,’ Dunn told Fish Farmer, adding that there was a growing ‘agri-tourism’ sector in Canada.

‘There are many people who are very interested in where their food is coming from; people are touring not only salmon farms but they are interested in touring shellfish farms and cattle farms and barley farms.

‘You go to restaurants here today and you find they are sharing the region and location of the farm, people are interested. Fewer and fewer of us have a direct connection with agriculture or aquaculture and I think these tours are an important part of the education.

‘Our industry is advancing so quickly that we really want people to have the opportunity to see those advancements, and gain a perspective that hopefully they will share with their friends and neighbours.’

Dunn said he has never taken anyone on a farm tour who hasn’t left with a higher opinion of the industry.

‘That doesn’t mean that taking someone on a farm tour creates a supporter and a lifelong believer in aquaculture. Many people come on tours and still leave and think that they aren’t supportive of the industry but they do leave with a greater understanding.

‘My impression of those interactions is that people leave with a more positive attitude than when they came on to the farm. Openness, transparency and sharing our operations is what our members are all about.’

Dunn said all members of the BCSFA are involved in the tours, though some farms get toured more than others simply because of their proximity to more populated areas.

‘All of our farmers are very open with their farms and are very eager to have people who are interested interact.’

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:40:26

BC expands farm tours

He said it’s hard for him to judge whether such a promotion would work in other countries’ aquaculture sectors, and that farm tours are just one piece of the public engagement platform that they have in BC. ‘I sit around the table with the International Salmon Farmers’ Association and we share our experiences and would encourage others to find ways to engage with the public.

‘I do know that around the world our colleagues in salmon aquaculture are doing just that, they are finding ways that sit with their cultures and societies that engage people – that might be a farm tour or that might be engaging in a different way.’

Last year, BC salmon farmers encountered unwelcome publicity when anti-fish farming activists enlisted the support of the Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson. They took a boat along the west coast in a campaign that claimed to be investigating disease on farms but ending up harassing farm workers.

Dunn expressed fears at the time over the biosecurity of members’ farms, but he is sanguine about such stunts, which he said BC farmers had dealt with ‘for years’.

‘Our members are farming at the highest level globally and have the third party certifications to be able to back that up, so we believe the concerns that have been raised over many years have been and are being met.

‘We’d certainly prefer a different engagement than what we’ve seen sometimes and, typically with our critics, we do have a much different and certainly less public engagement.’

The industry is buoyant and sales have never been an issue, he said, with just under 80,000 tonnes raised last year. Global sales reached a record CAD $745 million with exports to 12 markets valued at more than $544 million.

‘The demand for the product has never been higher, both domestically and internationally, and the customers both from the

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BC Tours.indd 15

Our industry is advancing so quickly that we “really want people to have the opportunity to see those advancements ”

business perspective and the consumer perspective really can’t seem to get enough salmon, whether it’s wild or farm raised. So we’re looking to try to find ways to raise more fish to be able to feed hungry people,’ said Dunn.

Through production efficiencies and some new sites, the industry expects to see production rise ‘in a very modest way’ in the next couple of years.

‘Our members are working with First Nations trying to find sites that would be suitable for farming. We know there’s an opportunity to sell fish, and finding the right way to grow, that meets the demands of the communities and regulators, is an important task.’ FF

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08/05/2017 12:40:47

SSPO – Gill Health Initiative

Complex challenge Meeting a platform for international information exchange

A Right: Iain Berrill.

“roleTheofkey the

GHI now is to ensure we don’t duplicate efforts

”

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SSPO - May.indd 16

N international contingent of fish health professionals met in Bergen at the end of April to discuss gill health in farmed salmon.

The fifth meeting of the Gill Health Initiative (GHI), established in 2013 so scientists around the world could compare notes on this major health challenge, attracted about 130 participants, according to Dr Iain Berrill, research and data manager of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation (SSPO), and a member of the GHI steering committee.

This time, along with Scottish, Irish, Norwegian and Tasmanian delegates, there was also a presence from Chile and Canada.

‘This is now one of the few networking initiatives of its kind that brings together so many of the salmon producing countries at an applied event,’ said Berrill, describing the two-day event as an ‘information exchange’.

While amoebic gill disease (AGD) was covered, the focus this year was very much on complex gill challenges, with updates from each country and a discussion on the state of gill diseases.

This had been the intention after the last GHI, held in Stirling in June 2016, when it was decided to broaden out the remit from the initial preoccupation with AGD. The regional updates were led by the new chair of the GHI steering group, Christine Huynh, who is senior manager of fish health for Australia’s largest salmon farmer, Tassal.

Tasmania witnessed its first outbreaks of AGD in the 1980s, and while it remains the primary health concern there, the country has accrued much experience in this field.

Following the introductory session, there was keynote presentation from Edgar Brun of the University of Bergen, where the meeting was held, and he talked more generically about the use of epidemiological tools.

There was then a session on some of the organisms involved, the various pathogens that are causing the main problems.

This led on to a ‘quite challenging’ debate on case definitions, with delegates trying to find a way of characterising each specific challenge, so vets in different countries know they are talking about the same disease and how it presents itself in the fish.

‘It was agreed before the meeting that we need a better understanding of each gill health issue and a clear way to talk about those across the various countries and regions,’ said Berrill.

‘Because of its multi-factorial nature, it’s very complicated but by having these discussions we’re moving in the right direction with case definitions.’

On the second day, the theme switched to the host response – how the fish reacts to any challenges. There were talks about non-lethal diagnostic tools, and how things such as smoltification are impacted by gill health.

This session ended with a talk about the development of potential

vaccines, for amoebic gill disease in particular, an ongoing project at Stirling. The university’s Sophie Fridman has isolated amoebae and is at the point of trialling test vaccines.

The final session was from a more applied perspective, with a look at functional feeds and presentations from feed companies Skretting and Cargill. Robin Shields from the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) brought the conference to a close with a round-up of research objectives that were identified during SAIC’s own gill health meeting in Scotland before Christmas.

Berrill said when the GHI was first set up its main aim was to get people in the sector talking, and hopefully out of that, projects would emerge.

‘I think we’ve succeeded in getting everyone in a room, and projects have emerged. The key role of the GHI now is to keep those discussions and projects flowing, and to ensure we don’t duplicate efforts.

‘But it’s also to make sure that people from different countries have an input in projects and activities so we’re not working in isolation from each other.’

After last year’s GHI, Huynh suggested one way of streamlining future research could be to have an online forum to highlight which projects are coming up, Gill health challenge have been described as having a significant economic impact, but Berrill said it is not out of control.

‘Like any challenge, we’re always looking for more tools to help us manage this problem, and gill health and sea lice need to be managed with due regard to each other.’

He said there is enthusiasm to continue with the GHI, and the next meeting will probably be next year, at a still to be decided location, though Tasmania was mooted. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:42:47

Trade Associations – SSPO

Comment The report’s key messages are as follows: ’Farmers risk high tariffs and non-tariff barriers on exports, which would render their businesses uncompetitive, whilst simultaneously having to adjust to a new UK policy for funding’ (i.e. funding for agriculture).

‘This could have detrimental effects on an industry – and rural communities – which needs long-term clarity and policy stability to adjust to the post-Brexit policy environment.’

Aquaculture, as a food production sector, does not receive anything like the Common Agricultural BY

BY PROFESSOR PROFESSOR PHIL PHIL THOMAS THOMAS Policy (CAP) payments, and it will be in a different position to agriculture after Brexit. But the House of Lords Committee’s comments on the potential impact of tariff and non-tariff barriers on exports are still relevant to fish farming businesses.

That said, the fact that aquaculture producers have been working within the EU non-tariff framework for the past 40 years should make it easy to meet EU requirements, at least initially. (Longer term there will be a need for UK legislation to maintain a position of equivalence with its main export markets.)

Thus the challenge for UK negotiators in achieving access to EU markets can probably be conceived mainly in tariff terms. The amount of work to be done (quite a lot) and the objectives of HE phrase ‘United we stand, divided we fall’ has origins going back Brexit negotiations (as near as possible, tariff-free to Aesop. It has been a rallying cry for social and political movements movement of products goods andshe services) cansensed be set out depend on the provenance of their quickly an aut may not be politically correct to say so at throughout history, and has been adopted by aspirational international with some clarity. dience response and moved to safer comedic material: there are some present but farmed Atlantic salmon would initiatives, some of which have seen only patchy success. things you just don’t jokeTherefore, about! with a positive approach, the EU and not have become Scotland’s leading food In contemporary times, it was a phrase used by Donald Tusk in his letter UK be able to negotiate constructively and However, her remark leftshould me asking myself whether we think enough export without the Crown Estate’s positive inviting EU heads of state to Malta in February, to consider Brexit. a conclusion willshbefarmed to the ecoabout the underpinningspeedily of the to provenance ofthat Scotti fish – and engagement with aquaculture development The phrase conveys a sense of collective purpose that is difficult to deny. nomic benefit of both sides (in fact, it will benefit for me that’s farmed salmon. back in the 1980s.

However, in the fractious political situation presently found nationally and EU more than the UK).

There is no doubt thatthe Scotti sh provenance is important to our indusNow, aquaculture is ainsignifi cant part27 of EU themember states), a strong internationally (including the remaining However, an early Brexit meeting has suggested try – it gives us the edge in all our key markets. agency’s marine leasing portf olio and is regusense of common purpose is not always easy to identify. Economic self-interthat EUinnegotiators maybut seekmost to ‘make a jobwill of agree Provenance can be defi ned various ways people larly by the Crown Estate’s Scottish est is celebrated increasingly apparent. things’, so thatand the negotiations getes bogged down that it goes beyond the appearance sensory qualiti of the final Marine Aquaculture Awards event.

This year’s Viewed realistically, the world situation has never been perfect for the in ‘Brussels process’. on and product consistency product: fl avour, texture, visual presentati event in Edinburgh on the 11 June was the emergence of common causes. But for long periods over the past 60 years will act appeal to the economic detriment both are always key factors in This consumer but provenance is of about usualhas highly showcase Scotti shworld a better place, albeit there beensuccessful a shared objective of for making the the UK and EU 27.

It would be unfortunate, and much more. aquaculture a rare and opportunity for induswith divergentand right-wing left-wing views on the best political and soBelow: Bogged down. wouldof beconsumer a mistake on the part of the EUincluding: ComIt reflects a wider concept quality assurance, try to join together mark itsthat success. cio-economic models to to achieve objective. mission.

Unproductive negotiations will inevitably the place where the fish is grown and processed; the professional The Crown Estate is presently at thepolitics centreseem less important- as witNow, however, left-wing and right-wing UK public methods; opinion behind a tough UK integrity of the producticonsolidate on and processing and the quality, of further devoluti on discussions between the nessed by the French presidential election. Public priorities are often focused stance. commitment and care of the people involved – the professional skills, UKnarrower government Scottishconcerns. government. The on local and and regional Given a seemingly just cause, the UK will unexpertise, passion and dedication of the producers themselves. long-term futureelection of key provides Scottish afuncti re- In England and Wales, the The UK general case ons in point. questionably adopt a ‘united we stand’ approach.

In Scotland our ‘place of production’ gives us a huge natural advanmains unclear se most couldqualified to negotiate in debate is centredand on professional Brexit, and onexperti the party It’s in our DNA!. FF tage because we grow fish in the pristine coastal waters of some of be squandered in the process of organisati onal the UK’s best interest. the most beautiful and wild scenic areas of the world, and our brand is change.

In Scotland, on the other hand, the constitutional debate is dominant. protected by its PGI status.

Bothconsiderations the Crown Estate’s core experti se and the Scottish National Party Brexit are secondary to preventing Likewise, adoption of the Scottish Finfish Code of Good Practice the Marine Aquaculture Awards are impordriving forward with its plans for Scotland’s secession from the UK. allied with the industry’s deep commitment to a range of independent tant in amaintaining the distithe ncticurrent ve coherence From business standpoint, political uncertainties are difficult farm quality assurance programmes, including the RSPCA fish welfare of plan Scotland’s aquaculture it would a to for. To use a sporting and analogy, most be businesses are simply going to scheme, builds on the underlying strength of our statutory regulatory tragedy if they political have to play whatbecame they seecasualti in frontes of of them. systems to assure our production systems. change.

There is little doubt that ‘economic nationalism’ is likely to impact on the Finally, the skills, expertise, passion and dedication of our farmers UK’s export prospects, globally.

However, This year’s Awards event was hostedinbythe food sector we have a large can be demonstrated in abundance day in and day out – and they were home market, thecomedian potential for importeld, substitution offers a stabilising actress, writerand and Jo Caulfi an opportunity in many food product sectors. showcased by the recent awards event. inspired choice by whoever made the booking.

On was May very 3, thefunny Houseand of Lords Europeanand Union However, being wholly objective and forward looking, it is this third She entertaining keptCommittee published its much anticipated report thea implications Brexit for agriculture. This 90area of provenance where the Scottish industry has greatest scope for the proceedings going on with swing. Onlyofonce page document provides lot of usefulwhat evidence and sage advice – not least systematic development. That is not to say that our industry’s skills did she stray, when sheawondered ‘provethat non-tariff barriers are as important (and potentially more challenging) as and professional expertise are not of the highest calibre, but it is to nance actually meant’. tariff recognise that our vocational educational and training structures, and In abarriers. room full of folk whose livelihoods However, at the end of the day, the value of the report is limited by the fact 12 that it can only express views in the abstract, until the terms of Brexit www.fishfarmer-magazine.com become apparent.

United we Underpinning provenance

stand!

Do we think will enough about what EU obstinacy only harden Brexitgives stancethe industry its edge in key markets?

With a “positive

approach we should be able to negotiate constructively and speedily

”

TI

“

We should be organising our training and education provisions much better

”

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– ASSG SG and SSPOTrade – to Associations into oyster growing around the globe and also an t topics of the day overview of the Hungarian aquaculture industry, which is ors respectively. beginning to evolve from production of carps to higher d we hope you’ll value predatory fish. We hope you enjoy all the changes. FF

Rob Fletcher News Editor

Shellfish – Sierra Leone

has 0 years of the stry. Now ournalist, er food magazine.

ry Board

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ons culture

Paul Wheelhouse is Scotland’s Minister for the Environment and Climate Change and is an MSP for the South of Scotland.

Janet Brown works to support and promote all aspects of sustainable shellfish culture and restoration via The Shellfish Team and edits The Grower.

BY JANET JANET HH BROWN BROWN, FRANCIS MURRAY AND JAMES GREEN BY

Marketing mangrove The other side of the oysters pond

Stirling team helps harvesters make a sustainable living Can the Association of Scottish Shellfish Growers learn anything from the 8 not make earning a livelihood for the local inhabitants any less pressing. benefits of both East oysters and mangroves to wayHEAmerica’s Coast Shellfish Growers Association is organised?

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biodiversity is well understood, but those most familiar with temperate production conditions might perhaps be surprised to learn of the dense rpopulati of mangrove oysters.

Robertons B Rheault – more commonly In tropical regions, mangrove settle on the known as ‘Skid’ Rheaultoysters (Rheault being submerged branches‘row’) and aerial roots of mangrove pronounced or Bob – set up the trees and dense colonies, providing a habitat Eastform Coast Shellfish Growers Association ols for many small invertebrates and juvenile fish.

(ECSGA) in 2004 and has been its executive Meanwhile, theyears. mangroves themselves are a director for six d perfect habitat for juvenilesinofthe all species, butasalso Skid became involved idea of an home to many largerhe endangered sociation because had beenspecies, workingsuch as an as the West African and crocodiles, with oyster farmer in amanatee state without an aquaculdolphins and turtles spottIsland. ed in the ture industry at theoccasionally time – Rhode channels. rectory main ‘I had to be very active on the state level to Thethings habitat value of such a place, centred on get going,’ hejust said.

‘I established a state the Sherbro River estuary of Sierra Leone, has been growers’ association with a few allies, started surer, Steve Bracken, Herve Miguad, Sunil Kadri and Ken Hughes recognised the designati on of Marine Protected writing an by industry newsletter and sent it to all n: Andrew Balahura Area (MPA). the state legislators, brought in guest speakers wds wdowds@fishupdate.com Publisher: Alister Bennett Sherbro Island is the placethings and anyone has from other states where were who going Fax: +44 (0)read 131and 551where 7901 e-mail: editor@fibooks shfarmer-magazine.com O’Brian’s well Patrick naryAubrey-Maturin a negative word wasmay Below: Shucking oysters. .com www.fiprick shupdate.com upEventually their ears atwe thatgot name as ittraction featuresand in heard. some Opposite from top right: Commodore’, in which they seekingback out fixed the regulations thatEH5 wereare holding ettes Park, 496‘The Ferry Road, Edinburgh 2DL Harvesting oysters slaveLane, tradersLochavullin around the coast of West Africa.Oban, the industry.’ er’, P.O. Box 1,illegal Crannog Industrial Estate, Argyll, PA34 4HB from the mangroves; a centre of the tradewith andathere laying shells on mud This ledIsland on towas a larger consortium, 0) 1631 568001Sherbro right: are references in the book to seeing ‘of course great Clockwise banks tofrom helptop maintain number of growers getting together at various f world £95 including postage.

Air Mail.of Freetown, the ECSGA meeting; broodstock; trialsoyster; on heaps of oysters’ inAll the meetings and the ideamarket of establishing an East ietors Wyvex capital MediaShellfish

by Leone.

Headley Ltd., Ashford, ISSNBculture; 0262-9615 Dr Robert Rheault. suspended ofLtd Sierra Coast GrowersBrothers Association was ban- Kent Bonthe oyster festival; While rich inThey history, theorganised fourth died about. hadSierra seenLeone how is well poorest country in the world Growers judged byAssociation food securi- the harvest. the Pacific Coast Shellfish m ty indicators, and designati ng an area an MPA could does (PCSGA) had become, how effective they be in meetings with regulators, how they focused government research dollars toward key problems – they wanted that.

While setting up the ECSGA, Skid continued to run his own company, farming and marketing oysters trading as Moonstone Oysters working out of Narragansett, Rhode Island, and he is still an adjunct faculty member in the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture. He established the East Coast Shellfish Research Institute and has been successful in attracting several

Given the abundant natural supply of oysters, any attempt to culture them has to be really low cost

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The Darwin Initiative recognises this conflict (see box) and funds projects to help efforts to conserve biodiversity.

Francis Murray of the Institute of Aquaculture, working with Stirling trained PhD Salieu Sankoh ofresearch Fourah Bay College others, has set up a Darwin substantial federal grants to and address critical industry research Initi ative funded programme to help the local people improve their livelihoods priorities. in ways that doECSGA not destroy theand resources theygrowing? are utilising.

How has the grown is it still The al plan for the project set out was ‘to increase We initi grow in membership byasabout 10intothe 20proposal per cent a year and we income of oyster fisherwomen in year, the Sherbro 45 per per annum had a sharp increase this past but weMPA stillby only havecent a small fracand the wild populati least 18 per1,300 cent over baseline tionto ofincrease the industry as oyster members.

Of on theatestimated farms on the levels’.

East Coast, we only have about 15 per cent. The nature of the industry ally,that there was farmers a perceptiare on very that the oysters were under threat. who Coming isIniti such many small, part-time operations to suchpay an area with a European it is not to assume won’t dues.

There are fewsensibility large farms, andunreasonable several of these believe that there need is intensive oyster harvesting then there a realown possibility of theyifdon’t to join an association.

They canwill hirebetheir lobbyist. local exti ncti on of the species.

What are the main issues facing ECSGA? This and theathreat mangroves fromdealing the harvesti of oysterssanitation attached to We spend lot ofto time and energy withngshellfish their branches roots was the original premise the Darwin Initiof atimy ve issues.

Vibrio and parahaemolyticus control seemsbehind to dominate much project at its time. We areincepti also on. trying to rectify the trade war with the EU so we can However, when didconnections finally get underway a year’s delay - due restore some of the theproject lucrative we hadaft inerEU markets five to the ago.

EbolaWe epidemic whichtowas a catastrophe to the - this lack of years are trying getsuch acknowledgement for region the ecosystem oysters not seem apparent. servicesdidwe provide through nutrient credit trading, and we are conIt is mostly women who harvest, process and locally market the oysters. stantly working to improve water quality and expand harvest areas.

Yields and harvest eff ort increase over the course of the dry season (March to Are there different chapters in the ECSGA or are members mainly July) as oysters oyster folk? grow rapidly under optimal, high salinity conditions.

As increase, so gatherers are also more likely40toper cut enti branches or Weyields represent about 60 per cent clam farms, centreoyster farms aerial roots is ofathe mangroves on which oysters settle. and there nascent mussel industry.

Harvests thenyou cease abruptly with the onset of rains in July/Augustofaslobbyfalling I have heard talk at conferences about the importance salinity triggers spat-fall, declining meat yields and, ulti mately, high natural ing – what do you advise? mortality of the inter-tidaltoadult oysters most accessible to women It is really important ensure thatthat theare regulators don’t put you out of gathering dug-out canoes. business.from If you are not involved 3 in the process of writing the regulaUnder these conditi ons, larger multiconsequences -year class sub-tidictates dal ‘mud’that oysters in will the tions, then the law of unintended they bott om of the creeks may consti tute important residual breeding populati ons. probably hurt you if you don’t protect yourself. You need to participate keyscientific question then arises:the if the oysters themselves a valuableof your inAthe research, public outreach andprovide the education habitat, as has demonstrated oyster reefs elsewhere, as do the manlegislators.

Bybeen demonstrating theforgrowth in green jobs, the sustainable 08/02/2013 11:24:01 groves, is there not a real disadvantage to an MPA in removing both? seafood production and the ecosystem benefits, we can enlist the help is, however, where of the get complexiti project start toofsurofThis politicians when the some regulators crazy, es or of if this we have a need reface.

Oysters areEducating not sold onthe thelegislators shell, ratheristhey are universally steamed and search dollars. a constant task. There is huge most of theand shucked meats nothing smoke-preserved to enable stockpiling for periodic turnover they know about your industry.

If you don’t have sale mainland timeattoweekly do it then you markets. need to pay someone to do it for you. This is why With negligible economic value in the shells associations. under local conditions, one busy professionals are members of trade opti on is simply to put oyster shells out growers? on sand banks in the mangrove creeks Is export a major interest for your asWe cultch oyster spat toansett le on. in the market for oysters right arefor experiencing explosion A trial is currently underway to determine whetherto this simple methodbut of now, so there is not a lot of surplus production send overseas, ‘fishery enhancement’ can at least help safeguard the broodstock population.

Another option is suspended culture. But given the abundant natural supply www.fishfarmer-magazine.com of oysters, any attempt to culture them has to be really low cost in terms of setting up and labour requirements compared with current wild harvesting practice.

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Marketing mangrove oysters Getting material for supporting even the most basic suspended system is difficult. The most obvious source of supporting structure is the mangrove itself but while it can be used, it does break down very rapidly under the environmental conditions there and needs replacing within one grow-out season.

Understanding the catch per unit effort for the harvesters then becomes significant in order to have a baseline measure for effectiveness of any particular strategy, but this is itself not going to be easy to determine.

The catch has to be considered in terms of yield of saleable edible material. However, measurement of this, which relates to the oyster condition index (essentially the amount of meat in the oyster in relation to the shell volume), is not easy in animals that have settled on such a variety of substrate and are not in any regular shape.

But the real key to this problem is the quote of the eminent Australian oyster farmer and oyster equipment producer, Ashley Turner, as given in Fish Farmer, March 2017: ‘No one makes money growing oysters!’ It is all about the marketing of them.

What the project has observed is that, given good market access, fresh steamed oysters are more profitable than smoked oysters. However, this is not an option for most fisherwomen who live far from a market and must additionally smoke the product to extend shelf life.

Both steaming and smoking utilise mangroves.

Can the project assist protection of the mangroves by introducing solar powered stoves for steaming and more fuel efficient stoves for smoking?

And will this provide enough heat to ensure the continued safety of the product? The project has already demonstrated that fresh mangrove oysters can carry high bacterial loads.

A further question is whether the morphotypically distinct oysters growing on mangrove, mud and rock substrates are all really Crassostrea tulipa, and thus, critically, whether the large oysters at the bot-

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tom of the creeks are indeed resilient broodstock or a different species!

Addressing such questions calls for a variety of expertise and experience; some are the subject of research projects being conducting by Stirling and local partner MSc students.

They also highlight the complexity. It started with concern for oyster populations but while this still remains valid, the main issue is related to how to utilise this resource to sustain and improve livelihoods while limiting pressure from a growing population that is overwhelmingly dependent on oyster gathering and fishing.

Thus, the really crucial question is whether there is scope to improve the market value of the oyster product by any means.

Can access to markets for steamed oysters be increased through use of simple ambient evaporative cooling systems (solar powered options having proved unsustainable) or can value be added to smoked oysters through packaging and branding, or by targeting tourist markets away from Sherbro Island with live fresh oysters, or steamed or smoked oysters as part of ready meals?

The point being that one can only make a living by selling the product and only improve the standard of living by improving the value of the product.

To test progress and support development of a woman’s marketing cooperative through training on successful post-harvest technologies and promotion of the ‘Sherbro-brand’, the project plans a festival along the lines of the current Whitstable Oyster Festival.

This will be the Bonthe Oyster Festival, to be held from June 17-18 this year, Bonthe being the main town on the island, with the support of the council and Radio Bontico, the local station.

They will be joined by women oyster gatherers from the Gambia who have set up the Try Women’s oyster harvesting association, with similar aims

of safeguarding their resource and upgrading their product but who are some years ahead in experience. FF

Darwin Initiative

THE Darwin Initiative was set up by the UK government at the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It is a programme to help support developing countries conserve biodiversity and reduce poverty.

It provides grants (funded by Defra, DFID and FCO) for projects working to help developing countries meet their objectives under a number of international conventions, the Convention on Biological Diversity being the one being supported in this project.

The project is jointly set up between the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, (project leader Dr Francis Murray,) Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone Institute of Marine Biology and Oceanography (Dr Salieu Sankoh ) and Njala University in Sierra Leone (Professor Richard Wadsworth).

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Comment

BY DR MARTIN JAFFA

Salmon peaks How will rising retail price hit demand?

I

WAS initially horrified when I first started to monitor the retail salmon market in France back in 2004. The fish counter of the first store I entered was a sea of pink. The rows of different smoked salmon disappeared into the distance.

I had allowed myself a couple of days to scoot around all the stores I had identified as meriting a visit.

Yet, standing by the fish counter in my first store, it suddenly occurred to me that it might take a whole day to accurately record everything I could see in just this one store.

How times have changed. I recently returned from my latest foray to France to record the Easter promotions and I almost wish I hadn’t bothered. It was rather depressing from the salmon perspective.

Long gone is the sea of pink on fish counters. In fact, some counters no longer seem to display salmon at all or, if it is there, it isn’t immediately apparent.

What is on display can be excruciatingly expensive. This year, one example of fresh salmon loin was recorded as costing over €40/kg although prices can vary immensely between stores. The best deal I saw was whole salmon for just €7.50/kg.

Easter, like Christmas, is a time in France when smoked salmon is typically promoted in big family packs. But this year, I saw just one example.

Shoppers wanting smoked salmon for Easter had to resort to buying the smaller standard packs.

The reason for this view of the French market is simply down to high salmon prices, which have deterred both consumers and smokers alike.

Although news stories suggest that the current high price of salmon is down to sea lice infestations, the reality is that Easter salmon has been less attractive for the last three or four years. High prices are not the recent development that some suggest.

Thirty years ago, the salmon market used to have two distinct peaks.

One at Easter and the other at Christmas. The Easter peak has diminished to the point where it is becoming difficult to distinguish it from the adjacent weeks.

Above: French retail There is still some differentiation at Easter in the UK, but as in France, offering. this too is diminishing fast. There was evidence of promotions in most UK stores but these were not as attractive as in previous years. Only one store offered half price on whole salmon, otherwise it was just a couple of pounds off per kilo.

This year, Easter somewhat coincided with a decision to increase the retail price of salmon in most supermarkets.

There has been a reluctance to do this since salmon is often seen as a key driver of the fish sector and putting the price up not only damages salmon sales but also sales of other fish too.

However, once one store group decided that it could no longer post-

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Further price increases could “convince consumers that it is no longer an everyday meal choice ” pone the inevitable, most of the others soon followed.

There was even the situation where one store group was discounting some salmon products for Easter while at the same time increasing the price of others.

The average price of salmon is definitely moving upwards but it will be some time yet to see how much impact this has on consumer demand.

There is a view that consumers will not notice too much if they have to pay a few more pence per kilo.

However, most consumers don’t look at the per kilo price, preferring to focus on the total price they have to pay. Even as little as 20p to 30p more per pack can be enough for consumers to reject salmon and look for something else.

The advent of salmon farming changed the nature of the product. The widespread availability of value for money salmon meant demand soared.

But current high prices, due to the global market place, have forced a change in retail salmon. Consumers are still buying the fish, but further price increases could convince them that salmon is no longer an everyday meal choice but something to be eaten only on special occasions.

Is this the perception the industry really wants of the salmon it produces? FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 12:50:09

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08/05/2017 10:50:51

Trade Associations – British Trout Association

Future is French Popularity of added value products may offer exciting new outlet for British trout

BY DOUG MCLEOD

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HE French market for fish – and salmon and trout in particular- is renowned for its quality, discernment and scale of operation, from production through processing to retailing.

Accreditation labels abound (not only Label Rouge), while fish merchants, fish mongers and producer outlets along the coast continue to thrive alongside supermarkets.

The smoked sector of the market is particularly valuable, and represents a significant market opportunity for salmon and trout.

However, the market is a-changing, with price elasticity and product format becoming the buzz words of 2017 for market analysts.

Average retail prices for smoked salmon and trout are closely monitored in France, with the past 10 years’ values illustrated in the graph (there is a comment from the primary source, FranceAgriMer, that ‘Salmon Norway is the midrange reference, with Ireland and Scotland being mostly marketed as high grade products’).

If we look at the trends, trout prices have shown a limited increase over the period while ‘all origins salmon’ values have increased significantly since 2007 and especially since 2012 (from euro 24.9/ kg to euro 28.0/kg).

During recent years (2012–14), after the retail price rose above euro 25/kg, there has been a significant change in French consumer behaviour, with the percentage of purchasing households declining from around 72 per cent to 67 per cent and the purchase frequency dropping from five to 4.4.

Meanwhile, smoked trout, despite being priced higher than all origins salmon for most of the period, has experienced an increase in consumption, with an additional 2.75 million consumers added between 2012 and 2016.

Fresh trout sales have also increased, with the percentage of purchasing households rising from 14.8 per cent to 19.5 per cent during the period.

However, the dynamic sector of the French trout market has been added value products, not simply smoked, but where trout is being marketed as a traditional product but presented in an innovative and modern format (‘gourmet’, ready to cook).

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Source: EUMOFA Report ‘Smoked salmon in France’

Many new products have been launched on to the French market in the past two years (source: Aquimer: Trout: Success Story for the Future?), imported from several countries as well as processed in France itself, including Smoked with Dried Tomatoes from Poland, Trout Strips in Marinade from Finland, BBQ Trout on Plank from Sweden, and Alpenland Trout Mousse from Germany.

The average retail price of 15 new products was euro 27/kg, although it should be noted that this is based on the price per pack and has not been adjusted for inclusion of cheaper ingredients along with the trout.

But if the two extreme values - both the cheapest (euro 8.07/kg) and the most expensive (euro 91/kg) - are excluded as outliers, the average for the remaining 13 products is euro 23.50/kg. Perhaps most interesting is the wide range of prices, from euro 9.98/kg to euro 53.75/kg.

A clue to the reason for the diversity of price is to be found in the source of the products, in terms of processing – the cheaper products (averaging euro 12.22/kg) are all from low cost producers, namely Poland, Romania and Turkey, with products from Scandinavian countries priced around 40 per cent higher (average of euro 20.06/kg).

Unsurprisingly, the most expensive products were consistently from high cost producers, namely Denmark, Germany and France (averaging euro 32.83/kg).

The stability of the trout market in the UK probably reflects a multiple set of issues, but certainly one difference between the British and French markets is the added value product offering, which is much less evident on this side of the Channel.

But there is little doubt that the UK market is dominated by fresh/raw/unprocessed trout, and that this contributes to the limited growth in consumption in recent years.

The French market and the apparent popularity of added value products may well offer an exciting new outlet for British trout (Brexit deals allowing!)

- either through the supply of raw materials to the producer groups leading the charge in France (Aqualande, largely in the south west, and Truite Service, based in the north at Pas de Calais), or through development of innovative products by processors in the UK. FF

The smoked “sector of the market is particularly valuable, and represents a significant opportunity

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Above: Retail prices in France.

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Farm visit – Scottish Sea Farms

Heart of the industry Salmon boss explains what makes his business tick

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HEN Jim Gallagher was approached to join an aquaculture company nearly 20 years ago, he was wary. With a background in finance and food, he had little grasp of what was still a very young industry. The firm was called Hydro Seafood GSP, later sold to SalMar and Leroy in Norway and now Scotland’s second biggest salmon producer, Scottish Sea Farms (SSF).

‘When I was head hunted, the initial thought was no…it looked very much to me like a cottage industry from the outside,’ said Gallagher, who has been SSF managing director since 2001.

‘But when I did some research, I saw it was a truly global industry. Salmon today is only 2.5 million tonnes of 120 million tonnes of fish that are farmed in the world. But it’s a major species…and has got massive potential.’

And if anyone is going to help the industry realise that potential it will be Gallagher, who has become an advocate not just for his own company but for Scottish aquaculture in general.

Earlier this year he was appointed co-chair of the newly formed Industry Leadership Group (ILG), and he has been one of the driving forces behind the Vision 2030 initiative that aims to double production of Scottish salmon.

As a farmer he knows that the markets, here and overseas, can absorb much more of the premium local product than is currently cultivated. And as a businessman he believes salmon can make a much bigger contribution to the economy than it does at present.

‘In Scotland we can deliver another £2 billion of wealth to the Scottish economy if the government will let us, and we’re very motivated to make that happen. That requires no subsidies, no cost to them, we’ll do all the work and the government can take all the credit.

‘The communities will benefit, our employees will benefit, Scotland plc will

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Below: Scottish Sea Farms managing director Jim Gallagher (right) and Darin Bryars with one of the ballan wrasse at Lismore North farm.

Opposite: Inspecting a pen ready for harvesting.

benefit and, hopefully, our national health will benefit. It’s a win-win. We’re producing a food that is really healthy and nutritious.’

Gallagher - a father of teenage boys, based in the Central Belt with his family, and whose interests outside salmon include football (he is a Celtic season ticket holder)- combines corporate acumen with a passion for his product.

He invited Fish Farmer to visit one of SSF’s farms north of Oban last month, and at the company office in South Shian he presented a power point to illustrate the group’s achievements to date, its plans and forecasts.

But most of this he can reel off like a mantra, especially the part proclaiming the rewards of farming the oceans. The sea makes up 75 per cent of the world and 25 per cent is land, with only a thin strip available to produce the food that we need.

‘Our message is we need to farm the sea to provide the food we need to feed the world population, and we need to have a society that has more of an appreciation that farming the land and farming the sea have equal benefit.’

Salmon is climate friendly and resource efficient compared to other proteins. It does better in feed conversion rates (a cow takes 8 kilos of feed to produce one kilo of meat, while salmon is 1.2:1), energy retention, carbon footprint, edible yield – ‘68 per cent of what we grow is eaten’.

Gallagher said he was at a business awards dinner recently where Leonardo DiCaprio was the keynote speaker. The actor and environmentalist criticised beef farming impact on the climate, saying ‘the enemy is the cow’.

‘I was glad I was there as a fish guy,’ said Gallagher, but he is frustrated by the lack of understanding of salmon’s eco benefits.

‘I don’t think the civil servants and regulatory environment in Scotland appreciate how good the sustainability credentials of the industry are.’

He showed these sustainability slides to Rural Economy Minister Fergus Ewing recently, who quoted the figures in Holyrood when the Green Party questioned the industry’s sustainability.

‘They have no awareness of how good salmon is in the context of food production and protein production and I would love to get Patrick Harvie (leader of the Scottish Greens) just to talk to us.

‘They have been very critical of the industry without giving us the opportunity to give them information. If they actually came and saw the evidence that supports these credentials I think they would change their view.’

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08/05/2017 12:52:11

Heart of the industry

We can “deliver

another £2 billion of wealth to the Scottish economy if the government will let us

”

Gallagher notes that the industry has come in for intense criticism since it announced its ambitious plans for expansion towards the end of last year.

While this is ‘not particularly an issue for us or for our customers’, it is for government and policy makers.

‘So we can’t ignore it and we have to be able to influence those people with the right information in a balanced way that is proportionate and let them make their own minds up.’

If he sounds confident of his powers of persuasion, he has good reason. SSF had its best year ever in 2016, with turnover of £154 million, up from its previous peak of £133 million.

‘We’re ranked number 72 of the top 500 businesses in Scotland in 2015,’ said Gallagher. ‘In terms of profitability, last year was our best in history. We had an improvement in our cost base and also an improvement in the harvest size of our salmon to an average of 4.46kg gutted weight.

‘Market conditions were unprecedented in terms of supply which drove prices much higher. But last year we had quite a high proportion of our sales on long-term contracts and weren’t able to take advantage of the market conditions.’

Last year they also won the Scotland Food and Drink Business of the Year award, an accolade of which he is particularly proud.

He plans to increase production from 28,000 tonnes in 2016 to 31,000 to 32,000 tonnes this year, 35,000 tonnes in 2018, and 40,000 tonnes by 2019.

‘In the last 18 months, we have got three new farms and we have some increases in our current consents, giving approximately 9,000 tonnes of new consent. We are working with further new sites and with a fair wind we will secure these in 2017.

‘By summer this year we hope to have some new farming activity within Orkney – they are going through the planning process at the moment.’

In order to carry on growing at this rate, and beyond, he will work with the rest of the industry to change the regulatory regime.

‘There is a big challenge for Scotland here. The ILG is about how we make this process better and more efficient. It takes at least three years from start to finish to get a new farm. In other parts of the world that timeline is about 12 months.

‘I think we could have a more efficient, streamlined planning and regulatory regime using fact based information when considering new applications, taking a proportionate view of the risks and benefits of salmon farming.’

In some of the applications the industry makes, information submitted by other stakeholders to local authorities is ‘anecdotal’ rather than fact based.

‘We’ve got to make that balance between social, economic and environmental in an application process. Until recently it’s largely been environment driven…that’s stifled development in Scotland.

‘No one is saying we don’t have our issues – sea lice is a challenge and we’re working on that and making investments.’

The company invested £21 million last year in infrastructure and since 2001 has invested £112 million of its profit back into the business. It is one year into a three-year spending plan of £77 million, of which £37 million is earmarked for the new

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Barcaldine hatchery (see below).

With 16 years of strong ownership and investment from Leroy and SalMar, both listed companies, Scottish Sea Farms is very secure. The combined group turnover was £2.7 billion last year, making it number two in the world for salmon farming, with about 14 per cent (nearly 300,000 tonnes) of global production.

SSF has 43 marine farms, predominantly on Scotland’s west coast and in Orkney and Shetland. All regions have had ‘really good biology’.

Bigger, better smolts with £37m hatchery SCOTTISH Sea Farms is investing £37 million in a new RAS freshwater hatchery at Barcaldine, about five miles from the company’s South Shian base.

Demolition work is far advanced on the eight hectare site on Loch Creran, which SSF bought from the shipbuilder Lithgows, together with three slipways, a pier, a dam and a hydro power sub-station. The dam, providing a secure supply of freshwater, was part of the attraction of the site, said Jim Gallagher, as was its proximity to the sea.

‘We have our own power and water and are connected to the sea .This made the site ideal- we can control all the variables.’

The young fish will swim via a pipeline into a well boat from the facility and transferred by boat to the marine sites.

‘Until now we have transferred smolts using different methods from trucks, helicopters, and well boats from our hatcheries,’ said Gallagher.

Building of the hatchery - which will re-use stone from the demolition- is due to start in June this year and it will be operational next year. The first fish will come out by spring 2019.

The plan is to produce 150g smolts, twice the size of the ones SSF get now, and the hatchery will increase annual smolt production from five to 11 million. The facility will use 90 per cent less water than traditional freshwater sites and deliver significantly greater energy efficiency.

‘It consists of distinct units isolated from the others, so there is no connectivity, improving bio-security,’ said Gallagher.

‘Four batches of fish come in each year, and they are all discreetly contained.

It looks like a lot of risk but it’s broken down into component parts.

‘It gives us a better quality and bigger size of smolts, you’ve got a bigger fish going into sea when you want it to go in. If we have a cold or a dry or a wet or a warm summer that impacts the growth of the smolts in freshwater lochs.

‘This takes away those variables and gives you certainty that you can grow your smolts from X to Y in a period of time and you can deliver them to the sea when you want. That will also help the biological credentials of the industry. RAS gives us the ability to be specific and produce exactly what we need.

It will bring more security to the business long term and help us manage the marine challenges better.’

The group has four similar RAS systems in Norway but Barcaldine, as the newest, will be the most state of the art.

‘We will consider a potential phase two which will involve building a post smolt unit, rearing fish of 300-400g,’ said Gallagher.

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08/05/2017 12:52:31

Farm visit – Scottish Sea Farms

‘Last year was mostly a good year but for one or two sites with challenges, and this year so far has had a promising start. We’re using fewer treatments, different tools and we’ve got really good clearance when dealing with sea lice.’

If the industry gets a challenge it may take six or nine months to work through that but, said Gallagher, ‘we’re very clever at finding solutions and we invest to make sure we get the solution’.

SSF’s recent success in dealing with sea lice is largely down to biological and mechanical methods, which have been ‘excellent’.

‘Last year, 70 per cent of the industry spend on lice treatments was on non-medicinal. The year before it was 70 per cent spend on medicinal treatments so there’s been a big, big change in one year.’

SSF invested £4 million in Scotland’s first Norwegian built Thermolicer and this has been ‘hugely successful’. It has mostly been used at the company’s Shetland sites and, as part of a joint project with other industry partners, has been deployed on Grieg, Cooke and Marine Harvest farms too.

‘It has treated more than 2.5 million fish with a 95-96 per cent clearance rate,’ said Gallagher. He sent four staff to Norway for three months to learn how to operate it. Now, wherever the Thermolicer goes they go with it, whether to SSF or to other farms.

‘The industry doesn’t compete on the management of sea lice, we compete on other things, but not on that. There’s a good collaboration over our common enemy, which is beneficial to all.’

There is also industry collaboration on cleaner fish. Most of the wrasse used is wild but the farming of the species continues at Machrihanish, and last year the project delivered just over 200,000 wrasse from the facility.

‘The number is destined to increase to around 1.5-2 million but it has taken seven years to get here. Hopefully, this year it will be 400,000 to 500,000 and progressively more but it’s a lot of money and a lot of effort. Since 2010 we’ve been using wrasse, and in 2015 we introduced lumpsuckers, to complement the wrasse.

‘Just as important, though, we need to keep the medicines in the tool box. For example, caligus is a very small louse, and the best thing to deal with it is Slice.’

He said the recent criticism of Slice ‘needs to be more evidence based and the industry will definitely engage with Sepa to understand where that’s going’.

This engagement is likely to take place through the SSPO and the ILG, which Gallagher believes can bring about the necessary changes in the salmon sector, especially with the involvement of Fergus Ewing.

‘With having the ministerial lead I’m hugely optimistic it will be successful. I don’t say it’s going to be easy, there’s a lot of work to do. But I think there’s a willingness to at least explore that and the industry will get the growth they are looking for and hopefully Scottish Sea Farms will get their proportion of the growth.

‘I am involved in the ILG to make sure the industry gets the growth they should have because I believe we have a fantastic product and we have fantastic people, and can create even more value for Scotland and for the rural communities we operate in.’

Gallagher, after 19 years in the business, plans to remain at the centre of things for the foreseeable future.

‘I have a great job working in a fantastic Industry and I hope I’ll be here for at least another 10 or 15 years, or as long as somebody wants to let me.

The industry has huge potential, and the future is

We’re “ using fewer

treatments, different tools and we’ve got really good clearance with sea lice

”

Above: Site manager Ali Macaulay looks at feeding patterns.

Opposite: Visiting Lismore North.

Provenance the priority in export markets PROVENANCE is key to Scottish Sea Farms salmon, both in its major domestic market in the UK as well as the export markets in 22 different countries.

‘Scottish origin is hugely important for our business,’ said Jim Gallagher. ‘Lochmuir [the M&S brand] is a great example of that, as is Label Rouge that we produce for the French market,

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SSF.indd 26

and the food service markets in the US.’ The company had an export value of £64 million last year, 42 per cent of the company’s total turnover. The US is the firm’s biggest export market, with approximately 15 per cent, and has been for a number of years. Mostly the salmon is sold to the food service sector – a good place to be, said Gallagher, because they recognise the quality of the

salmon and are willing to pay for it. There is a very high specification, and they want big fish in the region of 5.5-7kg.

The Far East is another important market.

They appreciate Scottish freshness and traceability but they only want big fish and it is a challenge having enough for everyone, said Gallagher. Food safety and security is the ‘total

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08/05/2017 12:53:21

Lismore leads the way

Lismore leads the way Award winning site depends on team effort to maintain standards

L

ISMORE North farm, off Appin in Loch Linnhe, includes two sites with 14 cages in total. SSF have around 2.5 million fish in the whole Linnhe system. At the site we visit there are eight Fusion Marine Oceanflex pens of 80m circumference and 25m deep.

Ali Macaulay, site manager, said after the fish are discharged from a well boat their weight is recorded, ‘we have a look at them’ and then they start feeding, by hand at first.

‘We get to know the fish,’ he said, although there are about 17-18,000 in each cage. Every week the team assesses the feed, watching the fish on screens in the ‘house block’, as well as in the pens.

‘Each cage is different so we play it by ear. We start feeding the fish by hand for a few weeks and then switch to feeding systems.’

This hand feeding stage lasts for about two weeks and helps ensure that little food is wasted. Once they begin automated feeding – via a remotely controlled system made by Steinsvik and distributed from two silos – the fish are monitored each morning. Then feeding is started at a low level to ‘get them warmed up’.

Once the feed pellets can be seen dropping down to about 5-7m below the surface, the fish are deemed to have had enough and feeding stops.

The cameras can also record oxygen levels and if these are lower than optimal, feed levels will be reduced accordingly.

‘The technology tells us what the environment is doing,’ said Macaulay.

When we visit, one of the cages is due to be harvested the following day

emphasis’ for the Chinese and they have sent over delegations to the farms twice in the last few years.

The firm’s biggest market is the UK, with more than 50 per cent of production. SSF has had the exclusive M&S salmon contract for 11 years as well as supplying other retailers including Waitrose and Tesco.

‘They like the quality,’ said Gallagher. ‘Scottish salmon is a premium fish because of its provenance

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SSF.indd 27

and everyone is prepared. The fish ready for harvest are 5kg on average, though the Label Rouge salmon are bigger.

Each member of the team has a specific responsibility but they work in harmony, as a unit – ‘all our jobs are interchangeable so we can cover for each other,’ said Darin Bryars.

He looks after the Label Rouge pens, as well as health and safety; Stuart Ross is the wrasse expert; and Peter is the net specialist.

The goal, said Gallagher, is to keep the nets clean at all times – the fish feed better and the wrasse, which are in all these pens, work better if all the nets are clean.

‘I’m looking for clean nets when I come here and healthy looking salmon.

We believe these routines and focus are giving us leading results within the industry – we didn’t have a sea lice challenge on these sites.’

They use a mechanical Remotely Operated Net Cleaner (RONC) – they have five disc head machines but are now buying nine disc heads after discovering the bottom of the nets were not being thoroughly cleaned and the wrasse were congregating there in the winter.

The nine head system has runners on both sides which go down the net, along the bottom and up the other side.

‘It’s an automated system, before we had it on a pulley rope,’ said Gallagher. ‘It’s robotic and very efficient. It cost £150,000 per unit, a huge capital investment but it has real benefits for the health and welfare of our fish.’

It takes one and a half hours to clean a net so the whole site can be done

and how we grow our fish; we have lower stocking density and our farms are smaller scale than other producing countries.’

Europe accounts for about 20 per cent of output and since Brexit, with the pound weakening, Scottish salmon has commanded a higher price return.

‘But we have some reservations with all the geopolitical issues at the moment. We need to

find a solution with Europe that gives us the most efficient access to the market, avoiding any unnecessary tariffs; and if we then have an independence discussion, we have to have a solution with the UK market, which is our biggest market.

‘We have a nice spread of clients and markets and what we tend to find is that salmon will end up in a place where we have the best return.’

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08/05/2017 12:53:44

Farm visit – Scottish Sea Farms

“

We keep records of everything so we can look at other years and other sites and spot trends

”

Growing Demand for Healthy Food

• Growing population • People are living longer • Striving for healthier lives

in a day or two. They get cleaned every week, said Macaulay, and they no longer need to change nets during the cycle. Also, divers come in twice a month to inspect the cages.

They use anti-foulants when a net is put to sea for the first time but Gallagher said his vision was to dispense with this in the future.

Every Monday the team conduct a lice count and inspect the gills. Wrasse are moved from cage to cage if necessary, lifted from the pens in creel traps and moved between cages to keep the sea lice away.

Wrasse density in each cage is four to five per cent of the salmon and an extra 50 fish in a cage will make a difference to lice levels.

Gallagher said the wrasse ‘have done the job we wanted them to do’ and the team have learned a huge amount about them.

They are fed as well as the salmon but if the lice count goes up their feed rations are reduced.

When it’s time to harvest the salmon, the wrasse are removed first – ‘we don’t want to waste them,’ said Gallagher. They are easy to catch as they are inquisitive and go straight into the creel traps.

Every SSF farm represents a £3-£4 million capital investment in infrastructure, with sensors looking at the environment, cameras looking at the fish, and feeding systems that gather growth rates and environmental data.

‘We’ve got the Technical Standard coming through, and all of this is leading edge when it comes to food production. If you compare that to agricultural farming I think we’ve come a long way, if not further,’ said Gallagher.

The company has spent £4 million on containment in five years because an anti-predator net costs three times a standard net. All SSF farms have various anti-predation devices, such as Sapphire nets, Ace Aquatec acoustic deterrents, daily mort collections, and so on.

There are seal colonies near Lismore North and they have managed to

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SSF.indd 28

live in harmony and the salmon have performed well. However, a site off Mull lost 17,000 salmon and 1,300 wrasse in March, most likely caused by a seal attack.

Gallagher said their aspiration is to continue to invest to deal with seal predation: ‘We’re investing a disproportionate amount but whatever we have to do to maintain the health and welfare of our salmon to allow us to take our fish to market we will do.’

Measures include working on a novel, more robust Salmon Safe ADD system, and an electric fence concept with Ace Aquatec, which is about to undergo a 12-month trial.

‘There’s a lot of activity going on but there needs to be more proportionality around how seals are managed in the environment – we need to protect the food we’re producing and the fish welfare is equally important.’

Lismore North was named the Best Finfish Farm at the Crown Estate Aquaculture Awards in 2011 and Gallagher recognises that his people are his best asset.

The farm team, he said, is 100 per cent accountable and the staff get a bonus based on the feed performance (the FCR is currently 1:1 at this site).

He jokes that when it’s harvesting time Ali

Above: Salmon pens at Lismore North.

Inset: Sustainability credentials. Opposite: Some of SSF’s recent awards.

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08/05/2017 12:54:14

Lismore leads the way

Macaulay thinks more about the fish than his wife and the entire team is ‘very focused on the details’.

Macaulay said: ‘We keep records of everything so we can look at other years and other sites and spot trends.’

There is a mini lab, too, with a microscope that they all know how to use, mainly for sampling gill health and detecting algae in the water. They can then communicate with other sites in the area and if necessary call in the health team or send them swabs.

Salmon survival at the farm is 96 to 97 per cent, which is industry leading, said Gallagher, and standards are kept high, from the ‘house’ to the pens.

‘We’re producing healthy seafood so equipment, clothing, nets, everything must be pristine.

It’s all about standards.’ FF

Good neighbour giving something back WORKING with communities and being a good neighbour is crucial to Scottish Sea Farms’ development. The fact that there were zero objections to the Barcaldine hatchery application and to the new Westerbister site in Orkney is testament to the company’s local standing.

‘We listen to the people, lots of whom are working for us, and they recognise what we’re doing in the community,’ said Jim Gallagher.

He is particularly proud of SSF’s Heart of the Community initiative, set up in 2011 to mark the company’s tenth anniversary.

‘The feeling was that we should do something that embraced good health and education, and would be of lasting benefit to the community.’

Since then, some 27,500 people have benefited from the fund and by the end of 2017 it will have distributed close to £800,000. SSF received more than 200 applications in the past year and supported 130 of these, amounting to an investment of around £170,000.

Gallagher said all the big salmon farmers now have initiatives to give something back to the communities they operate in.

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SSF.indd 29

‘If we’re going to employ future generations we want them to get an idea what the business does.’

Within the company, there are 35 different career opportunities. Training and mentoring ‘is what defines us’, said Gallagher, and he has taken on 47 modern apprentices and has four graduates.

‘We have a very intensive first six months of training and then a detailed personal development for all our staff.’

He has sent three of his staff for one year to Leroy and SalMar in Norway to learn about RAS systems, and they will be part of the Barcaldine team once they return. There are 89 people in SSF with long service awards of between 10 and 40 years, and all members of staff receive a bonus at Christmas, and have done since 2002, reflecting the company performance and ethos of sharing the benefits.

‘We’re geographically dispersed across the west coast and the islands and people are hugely important,’ said Gallagher.

With 16 different nationalities, he is aware of the concerns some of his staff have about the consequences of Brexit.

Processing manager Donald Buchanan said they have long term employees, mostly Eastern European, who are very settled in Scotland. They have married here, bought houses, and had children.

‘Then there is the transient workforce who come over and do a few years’ work. Both are a very integral part of the business, we need both.

‘But for the ones who have a short term view, the pound is not giving them the return they want and we lost a few at Christmas. They’re going back to Europe because it’s more expensive to live here and the money they were sending back was less because of the exchange rate. They’ve invested a lot of their lives here and we’re concerned about it.’

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08/05/2017 12:54:35

Net cleaning – Shetland

Quest for the best New boat to keep up with demand on chemical free nets

N

ET cleaning specialist Aurora Marine recently took delivery of a new boat, the Aurora Quest, which will meet customer Cooke Aquaculture’s demand for more frequent, chemical free cleaning.

The boat, which got to work with Cooke shortly after arriving in Whalsay, Shetland, in March, is Aurora Marine’s second dedicated net cleaning vessel.

It complements the Aurora, which was built in 2012 to secure the first ROV net cleaning contract in Scotland and bring the now well-known MPI Ronc (remotely operated net cleaner) over from Norway for the first time.

Aurora Quest will be dedicated to cleaning nets for Cooke in its Northern Isles area, covering sites around the islands of Unst, Yell and Fetlar, said Colin Leask, co-founder and director of Aurora Marine.

‘Basically, we are continuing with our contract which Aurora has successfully carried out for the past five years,’ said Leask. ‘But now, with Cooke’s growth on nets and volume, the Aurora physically can’t keep on top of demand.

‘Aurora Quest started cleaning for Cooke straight away once she was delivered in mid-March, as we have a busy year ahead of us, with Cooke’s expansion plans, and the already present marine growth in the Shetland waters with

marin design as Congratulations to Owner and Ship yard with Aurora Quest.

Delivery of Design, class - and workshop drawings.

the mild winter.’

The new boat is fitted with the largest MPI (Multi Pump Innovation) system, the 5000 high pressure pump, driven by a 500hp Volvo D13, which is capable of running two Ronc systems simultaneously.

‘We have two independent systems with a Ronc 7 ROV cleaner on each, but at the moment we’ll operate only one system,’ said Leask.

The second will be used as a back-up in case of any unforeseen breakdowns- an expensive system, said Leask, but one that provides reduced downtimes, ‘which is financially and practically beneficial for both us and our customer’.

Compared to the system fitted to the Aurora, this larger double system offers three times the throughput of water, from 220 l/min up to 640 l/ min.

‘This allows more cleaning discs with larger nozzles, resulting in fast cleans, but of course a larger pump requires a larger engine…resulting in three times the fuel consumption,’ said Leask.

‘So although the new system is larger it also has drawbacks, but I suppose there’s a system to suit each customer’s demands at the end of the day.’

At least 95 per cent of the nets Aurora Marine is contracted to clean are non-antifouled. There are two reasons for this, said Leask.

First, contract cleaning on a standard two-week cleaning cycle will keep on top of all marine growth on the nets. If the farm can prove that no chemicals Below: Colin Leask and his are being used for cleaning and no copper toxins family on board Aurora are present in anti-fouling paint, it will put them in a Quest. Opposite page: (left): better position when selling their salmon using the The Ronc at work; (right): likes of Freedom Foods, ‘ultimately resulting in a ‘Superb workmanship’. potentially higher valued end product’.

Second, any farm that has spent thousands of

This “ allows more

cleaning discs with larger nozzles, resulting in fast cleans

”

Korsnesvegen, 7970 Kolvereid, Norway +47 74 39 79 00 +47 90 97 30 87 www.marindesign.no 30

Aurora.indd 30

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08/05/2017 12:55:23

Quest for the best

pounds having their nets anti-fouled won’t want them high pressure washed, or at least in the early stages, in case it washes off.

‘But, inevitably, the marine growth still takes a grip on the anti-fouled paint, and will result in introducing these nets into a cleaning cycle as well,’ said Leask.

As to how often the nets have to be cleaned if there is no anti-fouling paint, he said that is ‘totally dependent on the farm owner’s requirements, and also the area the farm is situated’.

‘Certain areas are much more prone to heavy growth than others, and different types of growth.’

In general, for farms with no cleaner fish in along with the salmon, it’s usually every 10 to 14 days.

‘But if a farm has cleaner fish along with the salmon, we recommended seven to nine days maximum, to prevent the cleaner fish taking an easy meal from the side of the nets instead of feeding on lice.’

Aurora Marine ‘had no hesitation’ choosing the same Norwegian partnership of Marin Design AS and Viknaslipen AS to design and build Aurora Quest after ‘the superb workmanship carried out on the Aurora’.

‘It’s not a cheap option for a build of 15m, but we wanted the best tool for the job, ensuring we can supply Cooke Aquaculture with the best service available,’ said Leask. ‘So quality design and quality workmanship were a must for us.’

The vessel ended up being fully built from start to finish at Viknaslipen’s partner yard Poltramp in Poland, where Viknaslipen has most of its hulls made, before it carried out the finishing touches in its yard in Norway.

Viknaslipen currently has orders for 14 vessels and half of these will be built as turnkeys at Poltramp, with a few key Norwegian foremen positioned in Poland throughout the builds.

‘The workmanship carried out on Aurora Quest by the Poltramp yard is to a high spec, and it’s easy to see the tradesmen care about their work and reputation,’ said Leask. ‘From the welding to the final carpentry finishings, they’ve made a first class job.’

Now Aurora Quest is up and running, Aurora is taking on a net cleaning contract with Scottish Sea Farms around its Shetland farms, where priority will be given to cleaner fish sites.

Leask said they are ‘very proud’ to have secured the SSF contract, and

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Aurora.indd 31

one with Grieg Seafoods. Both these, he said, will allow Aurora Marine ‘to prove to more companies, our dedication and commitment to the services we provide within the industry’.

The Grieg contract will involve carrying out site service works, including administering chemical treatments, mechanical de-licing, towing feed barges and cages, and carrying out all general grid and anchor work.

‘We are currently in the process of buying our third and largest vessel, a Damen MultiCat service vessel, which will be for our site service contract for Grieg Seafood.

‘So it’s certainly a busy time ahead of us, nearly tripling our workforce from six to 16, and re-investing in the industry.’

Aurora Marine has grown steadily alongside Meridian and then Cooke (which bought Meridian’s Shetland farms) as they’ve expanded and eliminated anti-fouling on nets and chemical cleaning.

In the 2017-18 season, Cooke has increased by a further 25 per cent its use

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08/05/2017 12:55:40

Net cleaning – Shetland ‘As farm technology advances in cages, nets and grids, allowing sites capable of withstanding harsher weathers, hopefully we will then see larger sites and possibly deeper sites offshore in the future.

‘This will add to Shetland’s economy and employment for decades to come, and hopefully Aurora Marine will grow along with the industry.’ FF

of non-anti-fouled nets, said Leask.

‘This pushed us to invest and show our commitment towards our contractors Cooke, having this larger purposely built vessel built, to cope with the extra demand.

‘We’re confident it will allow us to now take on the extra cleans and grow again in line with Cooke’s requirements.

‘With approximately 450 people employed full-time directly by salmon farming here in Shetland, with roughly another 1,000 additional jobs providing support to the industry’s operations, it’s very, very important to the economy of our islands.

‘There’s of course still scope for further expansion in production, which is already helped with the likes of Grieg Seafoods opening their new state of the art hatchery, and several new de-licing technologies becoming available in the islands, which all enhance productivity.

Far left: Quality design in the wheelhouse. Left: And in the kitchen.

It’s certainly a busy time ahead of us, “nearly tripling our workforce and reinvesting in the industry ”

FishMagazine Farmer SUBSCRIBE NOW! Fish FarmerFish Farmer VOLUME 39

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Wellboats– Introduction

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Wellboats play an increasingly important role in the running of marine salmon farms, from the beginning through to the end of the production cycle

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s the salmon industry becomes more consolidated, and vertically integrated, wellboats are now being used routinely for a variety of essential tasks that help with the efficient running of salmon farms. Custom designed, wellboats are used to transfer smolts to sea water sites, to grade fish, transfer fish between seawater sites and to carry fish to harvest. Wellboats are also sometimes used to carry out bath treatments for sea lice.

16

example, Sølvtrans, the world leading company dead-haul of fish to processing plants should within transport of live salmon uses a closed be treated on-shore; that all water should be filtered prior to discharge into the sea; and that valves system, ensuring that when they transport live fish, no water is loaded or discharged of wellboat transport water be proposed as a priority for the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation to the sea during transportation or unloading.

Its new vessels are also equipped with lice filCentre. ters with 150 μ for circulated water, which colFor their part, the wellboat manufacturers lect lice and other organic materials from the are already working hard to address these issues, and the modern wellboat is a technically water, minimising the risk of any transported fish being contaminated by diseases, infection, sophisticated piece of kit, with a number of sea lice etc from the nearby fish farms. FF features that address issues of biosecurity. For

There are a number of risks associated with the use of wellboats, in particular the transfer of pathogens to live fish within the wellboat, and into the sea as a result of discharging potentially infected water. In Scotland, these issues have been acknowledged with the establishment of the Wellboat Technical Standards Working Group in 2013. Amongst its recommendations include: that all marine vessels should log and record their position and the status of their valves; that all water from

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Under control

Norway – Research Council

“

The environment is more stable and the fish use less energy adapting to it

Under control

Above: Project participants at the centre’s opening. Right: CtrlAQUA scientists.

Photos by Terje Aamodt/Nofima.

Joint approach between scientists and industry to address challenges of closed-containment systems

F

our Norwegian research institutions, two outside Norway and several industry partners from technology and the aquaculture industry have started operations at a centre for innovation in closed-containment systems.

The centre, CtrlAQUA, has been given NOK 200 million and eight years to reach its goal of making closed-containment systems for salmon up to one kilogram.

Innovations in closed-containment, where the salmon is separated from the outside environment by a tight barrier, can be important for the further development of the industry,

001_ff03.indd 4

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helping to address challenges such as sea lice, diseases and escapes, as well as reduce production times.

Closed systems can be land-based, where water is recycled, or sea-based, in which large floating tanks receive clean water from depth.

In CtrlAQUA, the research will deal with both approaches.

The main focus of the centre is innovation in closed-containment systems for the most vulnerable periods of the salmon production cycle, such as the first sea water, post-smolt, phase.

The centre will also contribute to better production control, fish welfare and sustainability

in closed-containment farms. This will happen through the development of new and reliable sensors, minimising environmental impact through recycling of nutrients and reducing the risk of escape, and diseases transmission to wild stocks.

Senior scientist Bendik Fyhn Terjesen, from Nofima, who is the director of the centre, said that closed-containment systems for salmon up to one kilogram have further advantages than simply preventing lice and escapes.

‘We can control the environment in which the fish lives in a closed-containment system.

The environment is more stable and the fish

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”

use less energy adapting to it. This means that the salmon has more energy available for growth and good health.’

Closed systems for strategic phases in salmon farming can help to make the Norwegian vision of an eight-fold growth in value creation from aquaculture possible, and lead to an increased number of jobs and the production of healthy seafood.

In the centre there will be three departments: technology and environment, led by Dr Fyhn Terjesen; preventative fish health, led by Harald Takle, also from Nofima; and fish production and welfare, led by Lars Ebbesson of Uni Research.

CtrlAQUA is one of 17 Centres for Research-Based Innovation (SFI), a major programme created by the Research Council of Norway.

The primary goal of the SFI programme is to strengthen companies’ capacity for innovation, and to develop leading industry relevant research.

Nofima is accompanied by five solid institutions in CtrlAQUA: Uni Research, the University of Bergen, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Freshwater Institute in the US and the University of Gothenburg in Sweden.

The University of Bergen will have principal responsibility for research education at the centre. The total budget for CtrlAQUA will be

NOK 196 million, spread over eight years.

Industrial partners from the supplier industry are Krüger Kaldnes AS, Pharmaq Analytiq, Pharmaq AS, Oslofjord Ressurspark AS, Storvik Aqua AS and Aquafarm Equipment AS. Participants from the aquaculture industry are Marine Harvest ASA, Grieg Seafood ASA, Lerøy Vest AS, Cermaq Norway AS, Bremnes Seashore AS, Smøla klekkeri og settefiskanlegg AS, Marine producers Norway AS and Firda sjøfarmer AS. The formal opening by the Research Council took place at the end of May at Nofima, Sunndalsøra. Norwegian fisheries minister Elisabeth Aspaker, present at the ceremony, said the goal of the CtrlAQUA SFI is perfectly compatible with the government’s ambitions for the aquaculture industry.

‘I have great expectations for the achievements of CtrlAQUA. Even though eight years is a long time, it is urgent that we find solutions to reach the goals. CtrlAQUA is an important part of this.’

The director of innovation in the Research Council, Eirik Normann, presented the SFI plaque to Fyhn Terjesen, saying: ‘You have put together a very strong consortium. I want to point out that the committee that evaluated the application was fascinated by the innovation that the concept brings with it, and it believes that the centre will probably produce important innovations within aquaculture.’ FF

NOFIMA FACTS With 360 employees and customers from 49 different countries, Nofima’s turnover in 2014 was £527 million The company is currently engaged in 620 projects worldwide.

Nofima has several laboratories and pilot plants, which it uses for research, including: BioLab – an accredited contract and research laboratory; NAMAB – a flexible minifactory; and Patogen Pilot Plant – Europe’s first highsecurity production hall.

Nofima carries out research for the fisheries, aquaculture and food industries, including: breeding and genetics; capture-based aquaculture; fish health; and consumer and sensory sciences.

Each year Nofima organises several symposia, courses and seminars in which its scientists share their expertise.

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08/05/2017 12:56:17

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08/05/2017 10:52:55

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

SCOTLAND

More than 1,800 companies from 79 countries displayed their seafood products, services and equipment in more than 38,350 square metres across 11 halls.

Among this year’s exhibitors, 73 national and regional pavilions showcased their seafood products and equipment, with new pavilions from Latvia, Myanmar, Poland and Venezuela, some of which, along with Costa Rica, Cyprus and Romania, were participating for the first time.

The Scottish seafood industry also had its biggest (and best, said many) ever presence at the international event, with 22 companies taking stands in the Scottish pavilion, covering the whole Scottish market, including shellfish, salmon, white fish and pelagic.

The delegation this year was about 40 per cent larger than in 2016, when numerous deals were signed over the three days.

Last year was a record one for Scottish seafood exports, which are at a new high of £5.5 billion – a rise from 2015 of eight per cent and up 56 per cent since 2007.

Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, as well as being an important base for the European market, Left: Scott Landsburgh. attracts buyers from all over the world.

Below (left to right): SSPO With food exports from Scotland to Asia rising Shetland’s David more than 400 per cent since 2007, this means that Sandison, Cooke it is a crucial three days for the Scottish sector.

Aquaculture Scotland’s All Scotland’s leading salmon producers were Colin Blair, Gael Force in Brussels, celebrating overseas sales in 2016 of Group’s Stewart Graham, and the Scottish Salmon 75,000 tonnes worth £451 million, making farmed salmon Scotland’s number one food export.

Company’s Craig Anderson.

Scotland’s salmon sector has expanded its export Opposite: Marine markets, especially in the US, France and China.

Harvest’s stand in Hall 5; Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Dawnfresh trout.

Salmon Producers’ Organisation, said: ‘Scottish Pictures: Dave Edler salmon is a high quality food with a well established global fan base, spanning many years and 60 countries.

‘Despite a rise in market prices last year, resulting

All the “decision

makers are here…and it informs us of where we should be going as an industry

”

Biggest

and best yet ‘Record’ crowds at giant expo with Scots out in force to showcase premium seafood

R

EGULAR visitors to Seafood Expo Global in Brussels last month will have noticed a bigger than usual buzz about the show this year and crowds that showed no sign of diminishing even at the end of day two.

One member of the organising team at Diversified Communications said the exhibition was heading for a record turnout, although official attendance figures were not available at the time of going to press.

It was in marked contrast to last year’s expo, which saw several high profile companies pull out following terrorist attacks in the Belgian capital three weeks before.

This year, everything went without a hitch, and the show, celebrating its 25th anniversary, was the largest ever in terms of exhibit space.

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08/05/2017 12:59:24

Biggest and best yet

SCOTLAND

from growing international demand for the UK’s favourite fish, and Scotland’s number one food export, consumer demand has remained unchanged.’

At the Scottish pavilion reception on day one of the show, Landsburgh told guests that the industry’s investment of more than £20 million in research and development is beginning to bear fruit, with the state of fish health ‘improving massively’.

‘We are ambitious and determined to grow overall production in a sustainable way,’ he said to the large gathering of seafood exhibitors.

Scotland had celebrated its second best year ever for exports in 2016 and, despite the ‘doom and gloom of Brexit’, the industry had a lot of confidence, said Landsburgh.

Stewart Graham, managing director of Gael Force Group and co-chair of the new Industry Leadership Group, visited the show for the first time this year, with the main purpose of networking.

‘It’s an opportunity – all the decision makers are here and it’s important to understand

what the end game is. It informs us of where we should be going as an industry.’

He said he was impressed with the scale of the exhibition, and it was useful to see where Scotland stood compared to some of the other salmon producing countries, many of which had huge stand space.

But he was particularly impressed by Scotland’s national pavilion, which he likened to a ‘village’.

Nathan Pyne-Carter and Andrew Cowe, of Ace Aquatec, described the expo as ‘mighty’, with visitors to their stand in Hall 8 from the Antipodes as well as closer to home.

‘We can’t predict which country visitors are coming from,’ said Cowe, a first-timer at the show, who admitted to being ‘gobsmaked’ by its size.

Equally impressed was Ocean Range’s Christopher Copping, who has witnessed the expo’s expansion in the 23 years he has been attending.

The growth of Seafood Expo Global, and Seafood Processing Global, can be attributed to the increasing popularity of seafood worldwide.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), seafood consumption has risen to more than 20kg per capita a year, thanks to stronger aquaculture supply and demand, record hauls for some key species and reduced waste.

In addition, global consumption of fish and seafood has doubled since 1973 and is estimated to reach 178 million tonnes by 2025.

The 2016 exhibition attracted 1,664 exhibitors from 80 countries, with 22,160 visitors from 143 countries, the organisers, Diversified Communications, claimed. FF

SSC looks for new markets CRAIG Anderson, managing director of the Scottish Salmon Company, said he attended seafood shows all round the world to find new markets.

‘We don’t know what’s coming with Brexit in terms of tariffs,’ he said, ‘so we’re always looking for new markets.’

These are primarily in the Far East and in North America, where demand for the SSC’s Native Hebridean salmon is high.

Anderson said they export nearly 50 per cent of their production now, a figure that has risen from 30 per cent three and a half years ago. And they sell to 26 different countries, up from 16, with the biggest growth in North America.

Su Cox, the SSC’s sales and communications director, said they were working with key buyers and distributors in long-term partnerships, and the trade shows were a useful means of making contacts with overseas markets.

The company, which has guided volumes of 25,000 for 2017, is set to raise production to the 30,000-tonne mark ‘quite soon’, said Anderson.

He acknowledged that there had been a ‘seismic shift ’ in the market and stressed the importance of developing the value added market– ‘if it’s all spot market we lose out on potential revenue’.

Cox and Anderson said the Native Hebridean salmon had been a big hit with American customers, who liked its unique provenance – something which is of ‘paramount importance’ to the business.

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Brussels - Intro.indd 35

“goIf weup aall

level, we all benefit

”

Right: Su Cox and Craig Anderson of the Scottish Salmon Company.

The SSC last year became the first salmon producer in the UK to secure full GGN licensing, the GlobalGap consumer label, which ensured ‘complete supply chain integrity, premium quality and full traceability’, said Anderson.

He said the SSC liked exhibiting as part of a Scottish group – ‘it’s a big market and it’s good to be competitive’. Scottish salmon farmers were accustomed to working together through the SSPO but this allegiance had grown stronger as all farms cooperated to address biological issues.

‘It’s important to work together.

If we all go up a level, we all benefit.’

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08/05/2017 12:59:52

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global

SCOTLAND

Brexit minister in Brussels bearing gifts

SCOTLAND’S minister for Brexit Mike Russell dropped in at the Seafood Expo in Brussels on day two to talk to some of the companies based in his Argyll and Bute constituency.

Russell, en route to a meeting with EU counterparts in theaquamanager-final.pdf Belgian capital, spent 40 minutes at the 1 27/04/17 Scottish pavilion, and visited Scottish Sea Farms,

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Above: The SSC’s Su Cox with Mike Russell.

11:50

Loch Fyne Oysters and the Scottish Salmon Company.

Su Cox, sales and communications director at the SSC, showed the minister her firm’s Native Hebridean salmon.

‘It was nice to see him here and quite right for him to be supporting the industry,’ she said. ‘It’s an important business for Scotland…and we are lucky to have such a wonderful product.’

Later, the minister announced that Seafood Scotland had been awarded just under £1 million of EU funding to showcase Scottish produce at international trade shows. Support in the latest round of the European and Maritime Fisheries Fund will enable the industry body to exhibit in seven trade shows around the globe over the next 12 months.

Russell said: ‘Raising the awareness and enhancing the global profile of the Scottish seafood industry will assist the sector as a whole, while helping individual businesses to expand into new markets and increase consumer awareness of their fine products.

‘Our fishing industry is a vital part of the rural economy, with our fishing fleet generating £437 million last year and fish and seafood recording increased exports.

‘Salmon is key to this success. We are the world’s third largest salmon producer, accounting for 94 per cent of the EU production. Each year we export around 172,000 tonnes globally – of which more than a third heads to the EU.’ Head of Seafood Scotland Patrick Hughes said: ‘This will ensure that Seafood Scotland, along with the Scotland Food and Drink export partners, can continue to promote and assist business seeking to establish new global markets.’

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:00:29

Biggest and best yet

First class wrasse are expo stars

Above: From the Caledonian Sleeper to Eurostar, wrasse head for their Brussels debut.

MAKING their debut at Seafood Expo in Brussels were ballan wrasse, the cleaner fish that are helping to rid salmon farms of sea lice.

About half a dozen of the fish, along with a few other marine species, attracted great interest in a mini aquarium on the stand of Wester Ross Fisheries, Scotland’s oldest independent salmon farmer.

They made the long journey from their Highlands loch to the bright lights of Brussels via the Caledonian Sleeper and the Eurostar, accompanied by Wester Ross managing director Gilpin Bradley, who is also the chair of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation.

He said he wanted to demonstrate the wealth of marine life found around a salmon farm.

As well as the ballan wrasse, the tank contained a corkwing wrasse, a rockling – a fish that is prolific on the west coast, a small turbot, a starfish, a brown crab, and a hermit crab.

‘All these were caught around the farm. It’s important that we remind people that fish farming is enhancing the marine environment,’ said Bradley.

‘Thousands of trade buyers come to meet salmon farmers at the exhibition but very few have the opportunity to see a salmon farm in action in Scotland. So we thought we would bring a tiny part of it to them.

‘In particular, we want to highlight the successful introduction of wrasse as a very effective and environmentally friendly way to keep salmon free of lice, which occur naturally in the water.’

Bradley boarded the sleeper at Inverness with his tank of creatures, for the 12-hour journey to Euston. He admits he didn’t get much sleep but said he was glad he booked a first class cabin so he wouldn’t have to share with other passengers, and his ‘coffin-like’ luggage could occupy the top bunk.

In London, he was advised not to take the Tube so wheeled his pre-

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Brussels - Intro.indd 37

SCOTLAND cious cargo along the Euston Road to St Pancras, from where they all boarded the Eurostar.

The trip went relatively smoothly, said Bradley, and was well worth the effort, judging by the number of visitors the aquarium drew to his stand in the Scottish pavilion.

The welfare of the live exhibit was Bradley’s priority and when the show closed in the evenings he covered the tank as the wrasse prefer the dark.

His farm is almost like ‘a little nursery’, he said, with the richness of species it supports. The nets, for example, are a good growing area for queenie scallops, which his team harvest for their dinner parties.

‘It’s fascinating to see the secret life that goes on in the seabed around the farms – like the growth of scallops, prawns, even a baby turbot,’ said Bradley.

‘A significant variety of marine life thrives around salmon farms, something which is not fully recognised by regulators.’

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08/05/2017 13:00:57

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

NORWAY

Salmon prospects ‘better than other industries’

N

O industry has better long term prospects than the salmon farming industry, said a leading seafood analyst at a seminar in Brussels held before Seafood Expo Global opened.

Dag Sletmo (pictured), of the Norwegian DNB bank, addressing pricing challenges, said the ‘new normal’ price of salmon was close to 50 NOK per kg, and that farmers needed to make at least 40 NOK per kg. Technology requires high prices and investment in the sector is escalating, particularly at the moment with initiatives to find new ways of producing salmon.

But, he said, ‘there is a limit to how high the price can fly’ because the consumer has other choices. The current situation, with prices rocketing to 100 per cent above average, is ‘different’, marking a new dynamic and an end to the old cyclical system.

He also said demand would become more important in forecasting prices, which was a challenge as ‘we know way more about supply than demand’.

The average price of Norwegian salmon in 2017 is 56 NOK per kg and the price on the contract market for the next 18 months is 59/60 NOK, said Soren Martens of Fish Pool, a Bergen based international commodity exchange that trades salmon futures, and the host, with DNB of the seminar.

At the Brussels Seafood Expo last year, the salmon price was 44 NOK per kg and by the end of the year it had reached 64.75 NOK – ‘where will it go next?’ asked Martens.

Decreasing volumes on the spot market – some 40 per cent of Norwegian

Above: Dag Sletmo

salmon is sold in contracts – contributed to the rising price, as did the increasing volume (more than 20 per cent) sold outside Europe.

But the good news, said Martens, was that all the prices correlated very well: ‘What we’re seeing is coherent and correct pricing in all markets.’

Alexander Aukner, another DNB seafood analyst, talked about ‘demand destruction’ when prices are high, poining to the five big drops since 2001, but said there was no need for concern because the consumer returns once the price decreases.

He said harvest weights were expected to gradually improve ‘as we get a better hold of sea lice’, and although fish health was still fragile and the biology in Norway ‘was not great’, it’s not getting any worse.

Volumes are also recovering in Chile, but from a very low base, and he forecast growth there of five per cent this year and 10 per cent in 2018.

In other forecasts, he said Norway could restore the market with China, now that relations are normalising, to 50 per cent – in 2010 when trade with China stopped, Norway supplied 90 per cent of the market, but that had been reduced to two per cent.

He was less optimistic over trade with Russia, however, as that country’s relations with the west worsened.

Aukner said salmon at over 60 NOK per kg was ‘too high’ a price and the rate between 2017 and 2019 would be between 4.5 and 5.9 NOK. FF

DNB plays a significant role in business areas with which our country and bank have had close historical ties. Despite its small size, Norway is one of the world´s major players in a whole range of industries. DNB´s first-hand knowledge means that we can offer exceptional expertise and unique insight into these markets.

Banking the Norwegian way

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08/05/2017 13:02:05

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

NORWAY

Leroy to feed fish prime microalgae

L

EADING Norwegian salmon farmer Leroy will from next month feed its fish an alternative source of omega-3 deriving from the microalgae ingredient AlgaPrime DHA. The product has been developed in cooperation with BioMar and US pioneers TerraVia and is manufactured from the sugar cane production of Bunge in Brazil.

Salmon above 1 kg will be fed the new feed formulation which, said Leroy, reduces its dependency on limited supplies of fish oil.

‘For the end consumer this change means that we will be able to keep the high level of healthy omega-3 in the Leroy salmon,’ said Henning Beltestad, CEO of Leroy Seafood Group.

‘We know there will be a lack of fish oil in the future and that we have to find alternatives to fish oil, as a feed ingredient, if we want to keep the high level of healthy omega-3 that we have in the salmon today.

‘With the use of feed formulated with microalgae we are certain to maintain the high level for many years to come.’

He said that through the cooperation with BioMar his company had

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Brussels - Terravia.indd 39

been able to take the volume of salmon being fed in a more sustainable way ‘to a significant level within a short time frame’.

‘BioMar has been at the forefront looking out for new opportunities within sustainable ingredients, and we need new raw materials to be able to follow the demand for healthy seafood.’

Since September 2016 more than 40,000 tonnes of the feed has been brought to market – mainly consumed by Leroy.

Other feed companies can also buy the AlgaPrime ingredient, said a TerraVia spokesman, but they must purchase it through BioMar at present.

Jan Sverre Rosstad, vice president of the Salmon Division in BioMar, told Fish Farmer that TerraVia had been bold enough to develop its vision in a big facility, ‘with great technology and great ideas’, before anyone else was involved in the venture.

‘This is not a future plan, it’s already started and that’s a good feeling,’ he said, adding that other farmers might now get on board with the new product.

‘There are some pioneers, like Leroy, then you’ll see the snowball will start to roll. But someone has to go first.’

Hans Halle-Knutzen of BioMar said tests will continue to see how much fish oil can be replaced with AlgaPrime.

‘Although AlgaPrime is already in the feed on farms, we are testing for an even more optimum level, and need to do whole life cycle trials.’ FF

“areThere some

pioneers, then you’ll see the snowball start to roll

”

Above: BioMar’s Hans Halle-Knutzen and TerraVia’s Katie Compton with FeedKind ingredients. Left: Leroy returned to the expo with a huge stand this year after puling out in 2016.

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08/05/2017 13:03:29

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

NORWAY

How happy was your salmon?

LEROY CEO Henning Beltestad said his company’s Gladlaks (‘Happy salmon’) initiative, launched in September 2015, provides customers with complete traceability.

Each salmon pack has a code which, when entered into the gladlaks.no website, reveals every possible detail about the fish and its provenance.

‘You can trace your salmon’s farm, date of hatching, harvest, feed type,’ said Beltestad.

Even its parents?

‘SalmoBreed,’ said Beltestad. ‘It’s about being open to the consumer. It’s like a guarantee.’

All the history is available and customers can even discover what lice treatment the salmon they buy has had and what medicines, if any, it has been given.

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Above: Henning Beltestad with traceable salmon fillets. Left: Leroy fish on display.

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08/05/2017 13:04:00

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

Farmer to add value to cod THE acquisition of white fish companies Havfisk, Norway’s largest trawler owner, and Norway Seafoods by Leroy last summer has made the giant salmon farmer the largest cod producer in the country.

Knut Hallvard Leroy told the DNB/Fish Pool seminar in Brussels on the eve of Seafood Expo that his firm now ‘had a mission with cod’.

This involves modernising cod processing along the lines of the salmon industry by investing in technology – ‘we believe we can increase its value’, said Leroy.

He said they are at the start of this journey, and have recently integrated the companies’ resources, after acquiring some 1,000 new employees and an extra 100,000 tonnes of fish, which includes saithe and haddock.

There were challenges ahead, such as the very short cod season, the high cost of labour compared to lower cost producers in Eastern Europe and China, the political framework, and the lack of technological innovation.

But Leroy promised more white fish products and brands, a reduction in manual labour, increased product value and improved product quality, on top of the Leroy sales and distribution network.

‘There hasn’t been much cod product development but we can use salmon ideas for cod maybe,’ he said, mentioning as examples sushi and ‘poke’, a Hawaiian inspired marinated fish salad launched by the company this year.

Later, Knut Hallvard Leroy told Fish Farmer that all salmon producers, having made big profits, were looking for new opportunities but there was limited scope for growth. It made sense, therefore, to look elsewhere.

Some firms have invested in Iceland but his group has decided to move into white fish.

Prime ingredient in coho feed THE new microalgae fish oil alternative that is to be fed to Norwegian farmer Leroy’s salmon, will also be included in the feed of a Chilean coho producer.

Above: José Luis Vial Ventisqueros, described as a boutique salmon producer in north Patagonia, in collaboration with BioMar announced that it will begin using salmon feed containing AlgaPrime DHA, a sustainable source of omega-3.

Ventisqueros’ Silverside premium Pacific salmon fed on the feed mix has a forage fish dependency ratio of 0.5 kg, which the company says is an industry low.

‘By achieving this figure, we have become the first ‘net fish producers’ in the salmon farming industry,’ said José Luis Vial, CEO of Ventisqueros.

Eduardo Hagedorn, managing director BioMar Chile, said: ‘We are very excited to see this type of development in Chile.’

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Brussels - Terravia.indd 41

NORWAY

‘Norwegian cod stocks have been well managed and are healthy,’ he said. ‘We know we’ll have annual differences in growth but we’re at peak cod now.’

And he agreed it was an advantage to have control over the fishery, as Norway does, being outside the EU and the Common Fisheries Policy.

We can “ use salmon ideas for white fish maybe

”

Above: Knut Hallvard Leroy

Norwegians netting interest in Tube trials that tackle sea lice

Above: Egersund Net’s export sales manager Tom Asbjorn Hatleskog (left) and sales manager Geir Kare Tonnessen explained to Expo visitors how their Tube Net works in helping to reduce sea lice and gill disease. Recent Norwegian trials showed a reduction in lice of 80-85 per cent with the Tube.

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08/05/2017 13:04:29

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

VIETNAM

Vietnam must act to end pangasius ‘crisis’

V

IETNAM’S pangasius exports to Europe have suffered a dramatic drop following negative publicity, highlighting the havoc a bad press can wreak in the marketplace.

Although Vietnamese pangasius is exported to 130 countries, sales abroad are worth $1.6 billion a year, and the fish should have as good a future as salmon, European retailers, led by Carrefour, are removing it from their shelves.

This has been attributed to perceptions about the safety of the product, both historical and recent, said industry leaders at a meeting hosted by the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (Vasep) on day one of Seafood Expo Global.

A Spanish television documentary aired in January generated ‘turmoil’ in the press and among consumers, said seafood consultant Alfons van Duijvenbode, who described the issue as ‘the panga paradox’.

However, claims about the toxic risks of the farmed species are ‘rubbish’, according to research published last year.

Toxicological assessments have shown that levels of pesticides and chemicals are so low that an adult could safely eat between 3.4 and 166kg of rejected pangasius fillet each day for the rest of his life without any adverse effects.

Tran Dinh Luan, of the Vietnamese directorate of fisheries, said his country’s pangasius sector was closely monitored from broodstock to processed product, with strict management and regulations, and internationally certified by bodies such as the ASC, GlobalGap and BAP. It is a ‘beautiful fish product’, said van Duijvenbode, and a key success story of Asian aquaculture. But the negative claims persist, market share has been lost and the sector must now devise a strategy to solve this.

Eino Brand, managing director of Inlet, the second biggest importer of seafood in Spain, said pangasius had been under attack for many years, but the fuss seemed to have blown over.

Following the television documentary, though, sales plummeted 75 per cent in February and March, and 73 per cent in April.

‘For two weeks the newspapers jumped on it,’ said Brand. ‘We like sensational news – maybe if something bad happens we feel better.’

Not only did Carrefour remove Vietnamese pangasius from their shelves, citing environmental fears about the Mekong river basin where it is raised, but the national parents’ association started campaigning

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Above: Dramatic drop in sales in Europe.

“

against pangasius in schools.

‘We’ve been importing this for 50 years and no one in the EU ever got sick,’ said Brand, who predicted 2018 would not see much of a recovery after three months of drastic sales decline this year.

To change the image of the species, Vietnam must take action. The world needs more protein and the fish is an affordable source.

Brand said his company was very surprised not to get ‘any signals’ from Vietnamese producers saying they were concerned about the market – ‘it’s as if nothing has happened’.

He and the rest of the multinational panel advised the industry to counter its critics, bring out the positive news, and be as structured in promotion as it was in production.

The government, Vasep and the companies must all work together to end the crisis in Europe, and copy marketing models such as the Norwegian Seafood Council or the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Alfons van Duijvenbode said being ‘well connected’ with the press would help too, and to that end, the ASC is organising a media trip to Vietnam in late May. ‘Develop an information kit you can feed to the press, and invite them over and tell them the story of pangasius.’ FF

Invite the press over and tell them the story of pangasius

”

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08/05/2017 13:09:57

Seafood Expo Global 2017

Peru open to new ideas

Regal offers virtual tilapia tours

REGAL Springs, the world’s largest tilapia farmer, was conducting virtual tours of its farming operations, via 360 degree virtual reality glasses.

The company, which employs more than 8,500 people in its farms in Indonesia, Honduras and Mexico, was keen to show visitors to its stand that its investment in aquaculture extends to supporting the communities in which it farms.

While the US remains the main market for its ‘all natural’, ASC certified products, Regal Springs is keen to expand in Europe, which currently accounts for just 10 per cent of exports, said global marketing director Francis Yupangco.

The arrival of new CEO Achim Eichenlaub, who replaced Swiss Above: Minister of production Bruno Giuffra preparing ceviche for an audience born founder Rudi Lamprecht last including Peru’s ambassador to Brussels and the Peruvian delegation. year, will help promote tilapia to a wider European market- Eichenlaub THE Peruvian fishing sector was out in force at this year’s expo to say ‘we’re was formerly with Nomad Foods still here…we’re alive’, following tough times caused by the fall-out from the El and has wide experience on the Nino weather system.

Continent.

The country’s all important fishmeal and fish oil industry, which provides Lamprecht, who left soon after marine ingredients to aquaculture, is heading for a better year in 2017, said Golden Springs took over the comKarl Berger Cisneros, coordinator of the department of fishery products at pany last year, was a former UN PromPeru, the government agency for exports, tourism and image. aid worker, who pioneered tilapia ‘It’s been hard for our fishing companies but I feel very positive that this will farming in Java in the 1980s as a be a good year and a chance to boost production,’ he said towards the end of means of providing the population the exhibition, where Peru had a bigger than usual presence. ‘Our job is to help with food and a reliable income. them find new markets.’

The model was so successful he The country staged a major promotion of its seafood sector, which brought rolled it out to Honduras and the more than 30 companies to Brussels, either as exhibitors or visitors, plus a big Mexico and his ethos still drives political delegation, led by the Minister of Production, Bruno Giuffra. the company, said Yupangco, with The Peruvians launched their Superfoods seafood brand, which includes corporate social responsibility promackerel, giant squid, scallops, tuna, eels and anchovies, with a ribbon cutting viding health and dental care, ceremony on April 25 in the Peruvian pavilion, also atended by director of immunisation and PromPeru exports Luis Torres, Isabella Falco, the country’s image director, and education for Brussels’ Peruvian ambassador Gonzalo Gutiérrez. employees The concept behind the promotion is ‘to announce to the world that it’s not and their the same old Peru, catching and fishing…we now have new companies and faminew products’, said Cisneros. lies.

The Superfoods campaign will help the fishing industry develop in many ways to take advantage of the country’s natural ingredients.

‘We are blessed by nature and want to be known as a land that can provide ingredients and products all over the world, linked to a healthy lifestyle,’ said Cisneros.

Of the aquaculture industry’s focus on finding alternatives to marine ingredients for fish feed, he acknowledged that there is space for alternatives, and that there are limits on fishmeal production. But, he said, fishmeal is ‘complicated to replace’.

With fish oil, there is now a booming human health market, with the increasing demand for the benefits of omega-3.

But not ruling out anything, he added that Peruvian fishermen had the chance to diversify into other products – and Peru could produce its own alternative ingredients, such as microalgae.

‘There are opportunities for many things,’ said Cisneros.

Peru has a small but growing aquaculture sector, producing scallops, shrimp and trout, and accounting for about 25 per cent of exports.

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Regal Springs has built 100 schools in Honduras and Mexico, and implemented free adult literacy programmes.

When the company arrived in these regions 25 years ago the literacy rate was very low but now it has improved significantly.

‘We teach the local people skills and then they can get a better standard of living,’ said Yupangco.

‘The company mission is to produce premium tilapia while building communities.’

There is a zero waste policy with 100 per cent of the fish utilised.

Tilapia scales and skins are recycled for fashion goods, such as watch straps and belts – the texture is softer than snakeskin or crocodile, as demonstrated by cushion covers on the Regal Springs stand. Gelatin and collagen are also extracted for use in cosmetics.

The farms and processing plants are sited in remote locations and the firm produces its own bio-diesel by rendering fish by-product. In Indonesia, the fish waste is used to produce compost, rich in nutrients, which is given away to the coffee growers.

Yupangco said that tilapia was virtually unheard of 25 years ago before it took off in the US. It is now finding new markets in the west – in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands, in particular- and Regal Springs had been coming to Brussels for the past 10 years to further this growth.

Left: Regal tilapia

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08/05/2017 13:10:23

Brussels – Seafood Expo Global 2017

FRANCE

Copenhagen’s

wonderful

gravlaks

FRENCH chef Hugues Le Bourlay brought his Danish gravlaks to Brussels in his briefcase and gave Fish Farmer and Wester Ross Fisheries’ Barbara Gaborova an impromptu tasting in the Scottish pavilion.

‘Let the flavours express themselves,’ he said, as he explained the provenance of his product, marketed under the brand Ogravlaks.

Made from ‘red label’ (Label Rouge) Scottish salmon, and produced in Paris to Le Bourlay’s own recipe, inspired by Danish tradition, the gravlaks are served in the Danish and Swedish embassies, and to the House of Caviar.

They will also be fed to royalty when Denmark’s Princess Alexandra visits the French capital in June.

Secrets Le Bourlay, a chef for 25 years, had a Danish grandfather and first went to Denmark in search of his roots. He ended up living there for several years, learning the language and teaching cooking.

He also discovered the secrets of good gravlaks, which evolved from the curing processes of the Vikings, who wrapped fish in cloths with salt and sugar and buried them in the riverbed to extend their shelf life.

‘They found evidence of buried salmon from around 950 to 1050

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Brussels - Int - ALL.indd 44

Above: Hugues Le Bourlay

AD,’ said Le Bourlay.

In Copenhagen he sampled a gravlaks that was the best he had tasted and he decided to introduce the product to France.

Over the past three years, he has perfected his gravlaks, based on that Copenhagen recipe, and ‘adapted it for industrial scale production’.

In Paris he imports 150 tonnes of salmon from Scotland, of which about 20 per cent is processed into gravlaks.

‘It has got better and better,’ he said, but now he is looking for a traditional smoker in Scotland, which is what brought him to the Scottish pavilion.

Let the flavours “ express themselves

”

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:11:02

Seafood Expo Global 2017

France and America scoop top awards FRENCH firm Globe Export/Algues de Bretagne and Cozy Harbor Seafood of Portland, Maine, in the US won the top prizes in this year’s Seafood Excellence Global awards..

The winners, chosen from 43 finalists representing 15 countries, were announced on April 25, at a special Seafood Excellence Global awards reception. The competition recognises the best products exhibited at the show.

Best Retail Product went to Cozy Harbor Seafood for its Lobster Meat, which features cooked tail, claw and knuckle Maine lobster meat that has been steam cooked and frozen with liquid nitrogen, and packed in a tamper proof cup with a full color sleeve.

The judges noted the fresh flavour and succulence of the lobster, as well as the whole tail, claw and knuckle meat.

Globe Export/Algues de Bretagne, of Rosporden, won the grand prize for Best HORECA (hotel/restaurant/ catering) Product for its Marinated Seaweed.

The hand harvested seaweed, cooked and then marinated with spices, oil, vinegar and wine, is available in two flavours: dulse with red onion and white wine, and green laver with Brittany shallots and cider vinegar.

Above: Winners of this year’s Seafood Excellence awards The judges commented on the unique umami flavour this product brings as an accompaniment to other seafood dishes.

Excellence Global special award for Innovation for its product, Kuro The Marinated Seaweed from Globe Export/Algues de Bretagne was Prawns. also presented the Seafood Excellence Global special award for Health Delpierre of St Aignan de Grand Lieu, France, was presented the and Nutrition.

Seafood Excellence Global special award for Retail Packaging for its The Seafood Excellence Global special prize for Convenience was product Sushi Mix - Visiopack. awarded to Vichiunai Europe of Bruges, Belgium, for its product, And Cozy Harbor Seafood was presented with the Seafood ExcelPerles de la Mer, mini surimi bites. lence Global special award for Seafood Product Line for its retail Golden Fresh of Butterworth, Malaysia, was awarded the Seafood ready flash frozen lobster.

Clockwise from top left: Brexit minister Mike Russell with Scottish Sea Farms’ Jim Gallagher and the team; guests at the Scottish reception; quality product; Loch Duart’s managing director, Alban Denton (second left) and his team.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

Brussels - Int - ALL.indd 45

45

08/05/2017 13:11:38

Innovation – Processing

Desert farms double output

Upgraded system helps Saudis meet new shrimp target

BY VINCE MCDONAGH

M

AREL, the international fish processing equipment company, is helping one of the world’s most advanced- and unusual- fish farms double its output. This fish farm is to be found on the edge of the Saudi Arabian desert and run by the country’s National Aquaculture Group (NAQUA).

Located just over 100 miles south of Jeddah, the main Saudi commercial centre, this fully integrated marine facility covers approximately 250 square kilometres near the town of Al Leith, and its many farms produce a range of premium products including Red Sea barramundi, shrimp, sea algae and sea cucumber.

Bjarni Bergsson of Marel, who has been involved in the sale of the company’s machines to Saudi Arabia, said the NAQUA complex was like a town.

It takes an hour to drive from one end to the other, and accommodates not just staff – from Europe, Asia and the Middle East – but also their families in

some cases.

The group’s annual processing capacity is around 100,000 tonnes, with products exported around the globe.

Six years ago NAQUA invested in new Marel equipment and implemented what it calls ‘Innova Food Processing Software’ throughout all processes.

Now the processor is shifting up a gear and improving processes again, this time aiming to increase NAQUA’s warm water shrimp processing operation from 200 tonnes to 400 tonnes a day.

The shrimp facility is ‘rested’ for three months – an annual practice to keep disease at bay – and when this ends, in May, Marel will install its new system, said Bergsson. Then, after Ramadan ends in June, they hope to achieve the 400-tonne mark.

To make this giant leap in throughput possible, NAQUA has invested in new Marel processing and packing lines, as well as an Innova paperless Quality Con-

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Innovation - Marel.indd 46

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:13:29

Desert farms double output

We’ve “ been trying

to promote this for years but now the market is ready

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Innovation - Marel.indd 47

Above: Marel’s stand at Seafood Expo Global in Brussels. Left: One of the world’s largest marine farms.

to take on women because they ran out of local males to recruit, said Bergsson. FF

NET SERVICES SHETLAND LTD A MØRENOT AQUACULTURE COMPANY

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trol (QC) system. The system is integrated with the plant’s automated packing lines, to ensure full traceability of products through to packing, and connects quality checks with the traceability system.

Reykjavik based Marel claims it enables full traceability of the raw material throughout the value chain.

It works by recording variants in the production and issuing warnings if any variations are greater than a predefined level.

Innova labelling makes it easy to print labels that include all traceability information for every processing step, and a copy of every label is kept in the Innova database for reviewing any label, whether it was printed for a pack, box or pallet.

When a product has been palletised, Innova checks to make sure that all quality control information for the pallet is complete. Only once this has been confirmed can the pallet be selected for shipping. If not, the pallet is marked as ‘quality check’ and will only be released with a digital signature from the quality manager.

By using Innova dashboards to monitor throughput and assess the reasons for any fluctuations, managers at NAQUA have already succeeded in raising throughput from 130 tonnes per day up to 200 tonnes per day, without any further investment in the plant.

Bergsson, who was on the Marel stand at Seafood Expo in Brussels last month, said demand was high for the company’s traceability systems.

‘We’ve been trying to promote them for years but now the market is ready for this.’

The NAQUA complex also incorporates a smaller processing plant – formerly the shrimp factory- for barramundi, which is mostly sold locally.

The main market for the shrimp – NAQUA’s primary product – is the Middle East and the US. They don’t sell much to Europe, which is why they pulled out of Brussels this year, said Bergsson.

The Saudis have invested billions in aquaculture and also farm sea bass and sea bream, which they use as a by-product to clean the shrimp ponds.

The Al Leith facility was built near the coast of the Red Sea in 2000 and has been equipped with Marel equipment and software from the start.

Aquaculture in the region began in the 1970s, after an engineer who was visiting the Philippines to recruit workers for a Saudi construction project saw a shrimp farm and thought the idea could be brought to the desert kingdom.

The company said: ‘Now we produce a far wider variety of marine products so we have rebranded our business to become National Aquaculture Group (NAQUA).

‘We have created one of the world’s largest fully integrated marine farms, employing more than 2,500 people from 32 different nations and with an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes that is enjoyed by customers all over the world.’

Women have also been employed for the past two to three years, living separately in the complex. According to Saudi law, a proportion of a company’s employees must be local so, to meet the quota, NAQUA had

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08/05/2017 13:13:52

Innovation – RAS

Prize project How Maltese technology is helping Emirates meet aquaculture potential

M

ALTESE firm AquaBioTech Group was awarded the Aquaculture Farm Innovation Award for a major development in the Middle East last month. The Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Centre for Marine Research, in the United Arab Emirates, won the prize during the Dubai AquaME exhibition.

The AgraME/AquaME/VetME Awards recognise outstanding achievements of individuals, departments, teams or organisations that have contributed to the growth and development of the agricultural, aquaculture and veterinary industry, with a focus on best practice and innovation.

‘We’re very proud to be awarded the Aquaculture Farm Innovation Award,’ said Shane Hunter, technical director of the AquaBioTech Group.

‘The AgraME/AquaME/VetME Awards is a widely recognised competition attracting the most dynamic aquaculture companies globally.

‘This award give us the chance to showcase our achievements to the entire industry.’

The Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) that are currently being developed by the AquaBioTech Group at the

Above: How the research facility will look. Left: Shane Hunter receives the award. Opposite: All the AquaME award winners, with Hunter third from right.

48

Innovate - Aquabiotech.indd 48

Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Centre help meet the region’s goal to fill gaps in the aquaculture sector.

The government is investing in fingerling production to close the cycle of local species and creating a new generation of scientists and experts.

Hunter said his company is working on Phase 2 of the development, having won the contract to build the hatchery and build and design the national research centre.

‘We’re designing and building all 17 laboratories there – I think they are putting at least £32 million into the centre. It’s an enormous facility.

‘The combined facilities will produce around 15-16 million fingerlings per year. Phase 1 was looking at three species but in Phase 2 we have another four species we’ll try out.

‘So the Phase 2 is more of an experimental hatchery and then the new contract, to run from this September, will be running Phase 1 and 2 and focusing on making more commercialised production.’

These production facilities will allow further international research collaborations and partnerships with the private aquaculture sector and support the educational institutes, while attracting aquaculture talents from the rest of the world.

‘We’ve built 11 RAS systems because we’ve tailored all the sizes and shapes of the tanks to different species,’ said Hunter.

‘For example, for some of the grouper species the tanks are very big and very shallow because these fish are cannibalistic and they strike from behind and below so you tend to make the tanks shallow.

‘Others are very fast swimming fish, like the seriola, so their tanks need to be very large and have huge bodies of water to enable the fish to swim at high speeds.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:17:47

Prize project

Rather “ than waiting for the private sector to build hatcheries, the government has taken the initiative

”

‘So the shapes and sizes of the tanks are all different in this research hatchery. The idea is to try and figure out what each species actually wants and grows best in.’

Already, there are cage farms in UAE that are producing sea bream and Asian sea bass and there is also a land based fish farm growing yellowtail and European sea bass.

AquaBioTech has also developed algal production systems for six or seven different species.

‘They’ll be trialling some of the local species of algae rather than relying on the usual Mediterranean ones.

‘They are trying not to just copy everything that’s happening in the Med.’ Hunter said AquaBioTech runs 24 recirculation systems in its own R&D facility in Malta and works with multiple species, including salmon and trout, sea bream and sea bass, and tilapia.

‘I think that gave the government [in UAE] a lot of confidence that it wasn’t just buying a technology on paper, they could see it working with a huge list of species for the last 12 years.’

AquaBioTech has built recirculation systems in Japan, Kazakhstan, Russia and Germany, but this is its first project in the UAE. The research laboratories in the country serve two purposes: to stock commercial farms and to restock the sea.

‘Before, it’s been predominantly selling fish to the fishing community – restocking to the sea – but now they’ve started selling as well to some of the commercial farms,’ said Hunter.

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Innovate - Aquabiotech.indd 49

‘I wouldn’t say there is a main focus because it is all relatively new. They are still just pushing ahead with a whole range of local species, trying to improve the numbers of fish that are available for fishermen to catch in the long-term.

‘But at the same time they want to see the hatchery acting as a catalyst for people wanting to build cage farms or land based recirculation farms for grow-outs. In the past, people have not built fish farms because they said they couldn’t get any fry fish.

‘Rather than waiting for the private sector to do this the government has taken the initiative to go and build these hatcheries.

‘And if no one buys the fry they’ll put them in the sea. But if people want to buy them to stimulate the aquaculture industry then they can.

‘It’s quite clever because hatcheries are always the bottlenecks for emerging industries.’

The systems developed by the AquaBioTech Group are all designed in collaboration with the experts of the UAE Ministry of Climate Change and Environment, taking into consideration their operational plans and needs, and incorporating the long-term development vision of the UAE to become a centre for excellence and innovation for marine and aquaculture research and development in the Middle East.

There are going to be two more hatcheries built shortly in the UAE, said Hunter, both of which AquaBioTech has bid for.

He said there is a big drive in the Emirates at the moment to complete these high calibre projects in time for Expo 2020, the world exphibition that Dubai is hosting in three years’ time.

‘They are taking it incredibly seriously and obviously want to showcase their strategies for food security.

‘They know their limitations in terms of the oil industry and while they’ve got the money they are investing it for days when they can’t rely on oil. You see that in the UAE in every sector. They’ve built up their tourism, and they’ve built up their financial services ‘There are a lot of actions going forward but it’s just starting, it’s still very early days.’ FF

49

08/05/2017 13:18:18

Innovation – Feed

Alternative thinking Scaling up production of new products a ‘massive challenge’ says investor

BY COLIN LEY

G

LOBAL aquaculture will need to find an extra 200-300 million tonnes of sustainable fish feed production by the end of the century if the sector is to reach its potential as the main source of food for the world says Mike Velings, co-founder of the Dutch sustainable aquaculture fund, Aqua-Spark.

‘That’s the sort of tonnage we need to add to global fish feed supplies each year and it’s a massive challenge,’ he said, adding that while a lot of very promising innovation is taking place within aquaculture at present, the total effort is still not big enough.

‘It typically takes two to three decades to develop a commercial feed alternative from the start of a new project to properly scaled production. In that context, while finding one or two good new products is always encouraging, they will only just dent the sector’s problems.’

According to his end-of-century projections,Velings believes the industry is going to need 20 to 30 alternative feed ingredient solutions.

Focusing his company’s own funding efforts on finding and supporting sustainable aquaculture businesses around the world, he said the industry’s feed solutions will need to come from ‘radically new directions’ to what we’ve seen in the past. This will include such possibilities as single cell proteins, insects and algae.

‘The solutions we find will also need to be capable of being produced with minimal land and freshwater use,’ he said, ‘and without prompting any new competition with other food sources.’

“

We’re talking about a total investment of some $600 million and a simply gargantuan effort

”

Big advance for Calysta Velings’ comments coincided with the announcement of a major step forward for a methane derived single cell protein being developed by the US based firm, Calysta.

Working in partnership with Cargill, with Aqua-Spark also involved, Calysta has just completed the official ‘ground break’ of a 37-acre feed production facility in Memphis, all under the development partnership name of NouriTech.

The facility is expected to initially produce up to 20,000 tonnes a year Above: Alan Shaw. Below: of Calysta’s FeedKind protein, a potential fishmeal alternative. The plant Fish feed. is due to come online in 2019, with the second phase of construction set for completion in 2020.

Output expansion is forecast to rise to 200,000 tonnes a year by the

50

Innovation - Feed.indd 50

time the unit is operating at full capacity.

‘FeedKind protein is a new sustainable feed ingredient that is critical to helping meet sharply rising global demand for food,’ said Alan Shaw, Calysta president and CEO, adding that the Memphis plant marks the ‘next step in bringing this important product to markets throughout the world’.

Velings, in welcoming Calysta’s progress, particularly the fact that the new protein is now moving into commercial production, stressed that the development of the new feed had already taken considerable time, effort and money.

‘We’re talking about a total investment of some $600 million and a simply gargantuan effort,’ he said.

At the beginning of May, there was news of further investment of $40 million led by Mitsui and Co of Japan, and also involving Temasek, a Singapore based investment company, Cargill, the Municipal Employee Retirement System (MERS) of Michigan, Walden Riverwood Ventures, Aqua-Spark and Pangaea Ventures.

Aqua-Spark is aiming to raise €400 million over 10 years for its portfolio of aquaculture projects, and completes a valuation every six months to allow extra capital into the fund.

It takes minority stakes for between €250,000 and €5 million in SMEs focused on sustainable initiatives. Pending the current valuation, Aqua-Spark holds €23.22 million in its fund and €14.6 million in a co-investment pool – bringing the total committed capital to €37.82 million.

All its companies must meet the three principles of economic, environmental and social sustainability. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:19:37

Alternative thinking

Promise from KnipBio VERY much at the other end of its development phase from Calysta is another new single cell protein, recently unveiled by the Massachusetts based biotechnology company, KnipBio. Working in collaboration with the New England Aquarium, the University of Massachusetts in Boston, Roger Williams University, and the USDA Agriculture Research Service, KnipBio has used the bacteria Methylobacterium extorquens to develop a fishmeal product which it says contains a composition of protein and amino acids which is ‘very similar’ to the protein found in wild fish.

Based on the findings of a study to test whether a diet consisting of between 30 per cent and 100 per cent of the company’s pelleted bacterium would be a suitable feed for fish and shrimp, the company has now issued an upbeat development statement.

‘Our results indicate that a diet made up of single cell protein can serve as a high quality alternative in aquaculture feeds,’ said Larry Feinberg, CEO of KnipBio. Feinberg also made a major claim for the new protein in relation to its potential production base, compared to soy.

‘In addition to creating healthier fish, there are other inherent benefits to using KnipBioMeal as a replacement for agricultural protein in fish feed,’ he said.

‘An estimated 100-acre KnipBio facility can match the protein production of a 10,000-acre soy operation, dramatically reducing the environmental footprint for production.’

Left: Larry Feinberg

Soy feed solution for tuna

In the past decade, much progress was made in developing hatchery technology to produce tuna from eggs for closed-cycle cultivation. Despite these efforts, most ‘farmed’ tuna today are actually ranched – caught as juveniles in the wild, and fattened up in A NEW soy feed formulation has ocean pens to market size. been hailed as a breakthrough in A major impediment to sustainable tuna aquaculture after it was pre- tuna aquaculture is the large quantity sented at the Offshore Mariculture of wild caught bait fish required to Conference in Mexico. feed tuna during the grow-out period.

Funded by the Illinois Soybean The research tested various soy Association, the research by Ichthus based diets for larval Atlantic bluefin Unlimited tested various soy based tuna in Spain and for juvenile yellowfin diets tuna farming and ranching. tuna in land based facilities in Panama.

‘The successful research results Building on these experiences, a diet should help provide permanence was successfully tested on ranched to tuna aquaculture, and can Pacific bluefin tuna in ocean net pens become the platform upon which off the north-west coast of Mexico. commercially manufactured tuna Bluefin are normally fed wild caught feeds can now be developed,’ said sardines, with a measured feed Dr Alejandro Buentello of Ichthus, conversion ratio (FCR) of 28:1.The who presented the findings. new formulated diet reduces the FCR ‘Closed cycle cultivation of tuna to 4:1, and decreases the amount of aquaculture, from hatch to harvest, fishmeal and fish oil in feed by tenfold. combined with sustainable formu- The new diet is also significantly lated grow out diets offer the best better for the environment, as the opportunity we have to prevent floating feed can be better monitored the depletion of wild tuna stocks and uneaten feed can be retrieved. while supplying the global market It is nutritionally dense, requiring less demand for these species,’ said volume, and is projected to be almost Buentello. twice as economical as bait fish.

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51

08/05/2017 13:20:02

Innovation – Investment

BY HEATHER JONES

Backing business New funding package for the Highlands and Islands will simplify route to market for small and mid-sized ventures

S

INCE the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC) launched in 2014, the sector’s appetite for innovation has been impressively clear. Scottish aquaculture businesses of all sizes agree it will fuel their own and the industry’s success.

Over the past two years, we have backed many businesses’ ambitions, matchmaking them with researchers and co-funding their innovation projects.

But our engagement with industry highlights that business-academic innovation is not the only show in town.

Businesses – SMEs in particular – also tell us about R&D they want to pursue on their own or with other businesses.

The issue for SAIC has been how best to support business-to-business innovation when the core remit of the Innovation Centres’ programme is

52

Innovation - SAIC.indd 52

to connect businesses with Scotland’s academic research base.

Enter the Accelerating Aquaculture Innovation fund. It’s a £1 million funding package from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), which will boost commercial innovation and use the innovation expertise and connections of SAIC to direct funding and project activity.

The programme was the brainchild of Jason Cleaversmith, SAIC’s director of Innovation, and Elaine Jamieson, head of Food and Drink at HIE. For SMEs in the region looking to commercialise new products, processes or technologies, this HIE-SAIC collaboration will greatly simplify the innovation journey.

They now have a clear point of entry for innovation support, whether the project they envisage is business only or a commercial-academic collaboration.

We therefore see this partnership with HIE as a role model in how public sector bodies can move beyond their organisational boundaries, and align resources and expertise to support innovation and growth.

Among those welcoming the collaboration is Stewart Graham, co-chair of Scottish aquaculture’s new Industry Leadership Group, who said: ‘The industry-led 2030 vision and growth strategy recommended support for the development of the Scottish supply chain – for each job directly in production, there are four to five jobs in the supply chain and wider economy in Scotland.

‘So we are pleased to see HIE and SAIC joining together to support SMEs to innovate. We expect to see substantial benefits and growth across the supply chain from this initiative.’

The pilot will support growth at many different levels. Individual businesses will benefit from co-funding, but we antici-

pate wider benefits for the industry and the region’s economy. These include increased turnover, export growth and new jobs.

We also hope to address the low level of R&D commercialisation in rural Scotland. Figures from Eurostat highlight how far we lag behind: average expenditure on R&D was €620 per head in the Eurozone area in 2013; €532 in the UK; €463 in Scotland; and just €187 in the Highlands and Islands.

It is therefore critical that we – not just SAIC and HIE, but all parts of government and industry – align to tackle this. Given aquaculture’s economic importance for the Highlands and Islands, the sector has a part to play here.

Since the fund was announced, we have seen significant interest from SMEs along the supply chain, and we expect a strong pipeline of proposals.

Our existing SME projects – that is, those involving businesses and academic researchers – are now yielding a host of great outcomes.

For example, Aqualife is developing new hardware to support lumpfish vaccination and boosting its sales through its work with SAIC. Otter Ferry’s work on the supply and deployment of lumpsuckers is leading to a potential £1 million EMFF infrastructure project.

And Pulcea’s use of ultrasound technology in sea lice control is progressing to field trial, and growing in scope and application.

We look forward to similar progress and gains from our partnership with HIE – not just helping SMEs to do more, but raising the profile of an industry that is key for HIE and Scotland, supporting local jobs, communities, exports and the career ambitions of young people.

It’s clear that industry’s commercial ambitions are being matched by the public sector’s determination to work together to support innovation and business success. These are exciting times for aquaculture.

Heather Jones is CEO of the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre. FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:22:39

Backing business

Highlands aligned with aquaculture

“

We expect to see substantial benefits and growth across the supply chain from this initiative

”

Opposite (top): Cleaner fish. (Below): Farming at Wester Ross Fisheries.

Charlotte Wright, interim chief executive of Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), explains to Sarah Burnett how HIE’s £1 million investment in aquaculture will boost the region.

Does this launch signal that aquaculture now has a higher priority for HIE? The sector has always been important to us – the history of aquaculture over the past 50 years has been aligned with the history of HIE and our predecessor, the Highlands and Islands Development Board.

More recently, the launch of the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre (SAIC), publication of the 2030 vision and strategy for growth, and strong leadership and collaboration across the industry have increased the sector’s visibility and potential and the influence and role of aquaculture in the region. This makes it a key priority for HIE. How will the fund supporting aquaculture in the region?

This fund focuses on accelerating the later stages of the SME innovation journey. With SAIC, we wanted a novel approach to making money available to companies to support R&D and innovation. This can make a huge contribution to aquaculture growth and strengthen resilience in rural communities.

Have you set specific targets for growth?

This programme will support near market innovation, essentially supporting businesses to commercialise products and processes where there is a proven concept and demand.

Independent economic analysis showed the programme’s

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Innovation - SAIC.indd 53

impact for the Scottish economy could be significant: for example, around £8 million additional turnover; £500,000 increase in exports; 50 jobs created; and eight new products or services commercialised during the 30-month pilot.

How will you assess the success of the pilot?

The pilot should demonstrate that our targets can be achieved, and that there continues to be demand from industry. We’ll monitor and review that throughout the period.

Are there other HIE initiatives supporting aquaculture?

Yes, with aquaculture as a priority, we’re looking at different ways to promote its sustainable growth, working with producers and suppliers across the region, often in fragile rural communities where the sector is crucial. They help firms develop growth plans, and realise their ambitions through tailored and specialist support.

We are also supporting the Science Skills Academy plans for a series of Newton Rooms around the region, as part of the Inverness Highland City Region Deal.

It’s an idea from Norway, to allow school pupils in rural areas to access state of the art science and technology facilities, and encourage them into careers in these areas. Aquaculture will be a key feature, particularly in areas such as Lochaber.

The Newton Rooms trial involves HIE, the University of the Highlands and Islands, the Highland Council and industry. So, like the Accelerating Aquaculture Innovation Fund, it’s about bringing together resources across public and private sectors to support ambition, promote aquaculture and deliver growth.

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08/05/2017 13:23:02

Innovation – Processing

Solid solution in freezing technology

A

S a specialist in freezing technology, JBT is constantly modifying its Frigoscandia range to improve processing capabilities, efficiency and throughput.

The company’s Advantec Impingement Freezer has now been updated to include a solid steel belt, designed specifically with seafood processors in mind.

The 1mm thick solid stainless steel prevents delicate seafood sticking to the belt, eliminating mesh marks and preventing products becoming damaged, said Torbjörn Persson, JBT’s portfolio and applications director.

‘Normally, delicate products like fish and seafood would immediately stick to a frozen mesh belt or, if it’s soft and delicate, could sink into the mesh, leaving marks.

‘But with the solid belt, you get a much better looking end product as it’s retained its shape. The solid belt freezer is particularly useful for large delicate products, such as king scallops, which deform easily, and flat fish as it prevents any head-to-tail U shapes.’

The Frigoscandia Advantec also uses patented impingement technology to direct high velocity air jets at both the top and bottom of the products.

The top jets chill the product directly, and the bottom jets chill the products indirectly through the belt. This results in extremely fast freezing times, so that premium products can get to market as quickly – and as fresh – as possible.

The belt comes in a 1500mm width with a variable belt speed of 0.5 of a metre up to 24 metres per minute. The upper impingement fingers can be adjusted from 35mm to 185mm from the top of the belt.

Cleaning systems are available for belt rinsing, belt foaming, evaporator cleaning or a combination of these.

‘Many seafood processors will have to phase out their old, traditional steel

belt freezers as the use of CFC refrigerants is now illegal,’ said Persson.

‘At JBT we anticipated this need, and we consider the Advantec to be an excellent alternative, providing superior rates of freezing and higher throughputs within the same footprint.’

The new solid belt machine will be offered alongside the traditional mesh belt on JBT’s conventional range of Frigoscandia Advantec Impingement Freezers.

At Seafood Expo Global last month, the company held live demonstrations, which worked ‘really well’, said Barry Jackson, JBT regional sales manager – Northern Europe.

‘Seeing is believing so it was a perfect opportunity to show customers at first hand the dual benefits of the speed of freezing and low dehydration, which result in a higher quality product.

‘Many fish and seafood processors are at the stage now where they need to replace older or less efficient freezers which still use soon-to-be outlawed refrigerants.

‘The Advantec freezer is designed to use the naturally occurring gases of ammonia or CO2, which are both highly efficient and not ozone depleting.

‘We had quite a few customers from the UK, as well as Eastern Europe, Russia, Canada, the Middle East and Asia – it really is an important show for the seafood industry globally.’ FF

Dynamic system tracks products AMERICAN company Dynamic Systems has launched a traceability and production system for the aquaculture industry.

The SIMBA (Specialised Inventory Management with Barcode Accuracy) Line of Traceability and Production Software is designed to help seafood processors handle, label and track their products faster and more accurately.

According to the Kirkland, Washington, based company, SIMBA’s unique user interface provides automated detailed reporting, starting at the source (pond, dock) using touch screen technology on rugged tablets, and follows the lot through each step of the process.

The system improves business processes through automated scanning, reduced labour, and reduced operational costs and enhanced reporting in real-time. Each time SIMBA labels a pack, that item is entered into the computer’s inventory, so sales people and management will have an accurate record of current inventory with product details.

At the time of shipping, the logics feature of SIMBA tracks each carton or pallet on to a specific van or records it to a work order or sales order. A Bill of Lading is produced automatically. This feature not only saves time in the shipping process, it eliminates disputes with the customer regarding what was actually shipped.

Key results from implementing the SIMBA software include increased production speed; the ability to get real-time, accurate production reports; full

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Innovation - bits.indd 54

Above: Touch screen used when receiving seafood into processing

traceability, accurate real time inventory; improved yields, carton and pallet labels; and expedited van loading.

‘We are currently talking to many aquaculture firms and have been supplying seafood processors (wild) for over 20 years,’ said Dynamic Systems.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:24:52

Innovation – Processing

Smart labelling keeps fish fresh A NEW smart labelling system, said to provide better shelf life accuracy and reduce food waste, is to be introduced on Marine Harvest products.

The company will be the first global seafood firm to use the Keep-it tool which, it claims, will revolutionise the way the industry defines shelf life by making it easier to secure freshness and food quality.

Keep-it indicators are attached directly after the fresh fish is cut and packed. Throughout the cold chain, Keep-it will track the actual temperature impact on the fish product in real time, enabling a more dynamic and precise shelf life than traditional date stamping, says Keep-it Technologies.

Ola Brattvoll, chief operating officer at Marine Harvest, said: ‘Temperature variations in the cold chain makes handling fresh fish a race against the clock.

‘With Keep-it shelf life indicators, we can offer our clients and their customers a tool that monitors freshness with accuracy.

‘It is both simple and smart, and secures the top quality product we would like to offer the European seafood consumers.’

Marine Harvest is planning to introduce its products with Keep-it indicators in 10

Above: XKristen A. Hovland of Keep-it Technologies. Below:Ola Brattvoll of Marine Harvest

Handling “fresh fish

is a race against the clock

”

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Innovation - bits.indd 55

European markets by 2019. Test launches will take place in selected countries this year.

‘We have high expectations for this new technology and that it will help us in further developing the high quality pre-packed fresh fish category in Europe,’ said Brattvoll.

After testing the concept over a few years with the Norwegian retailer REMA 1000, verifying the concept and documenting value creation, Keep-it is now ready to launch internationally.

The retail chain has experienced increased consumer satisfaction, better in-store routines, reduced food waste and hence improved profitability.

Kristen A. Hovland, CEO of Keep-it Technologies, said: ‘Our aim is to provide a better tool for producers, retailers and consumers than today’s static date stamp.

‘With Keep-it, Marine Harvest and their customers will have a smart and simple tool to secure and document a high quality cold chain and evidence of freshness. With our solution we believe traditional date stamping will soon be expired.’

NEW PRODUCTS PLATFORM From this month, Fish Farmer will use this page to showcase innovations for the aquaculture market – new products, equipment, farm technology, disease treatments and so on. The scope is broad and the only criteria is that the innovation is about to be launched or recently commercialised and looking for customers. Contact Dave Edler (dedler@fishupdate.com) 55

08/05/2017 13:25:56

Innovation – Humane slaughter

Stunning advances Universal processing progress as Ace invention proves its worth

A

RADICAL shift in the way fish are being stunned is taking place worldwide as the long awaited Humane Stunner Universal (HSU), made by Scottish firm Ace Aquatec, tackles welfare, quality and efficiency head on.

Aquaculture has always been ahead of the curve as far as humane slaughter has been concerned but now it is seeing the benefits of a fast, efficient and humane slaughter system as a result of advances in stunning technology.

Ace Aquatec’s CEO Nathan Pyne-Carter says that after half a million pounds spent on R&D overcoming the challenges of haemorrhaging in fillets, his company can now offer a system for any species, that can be calibrated to offer quality improvements over existing systems.

‘With the spectre of damage removed, we are left with the perfect stunning system: zero handling, no removal of fish from water, a choice of pre or post pump stunning, big efficiency savings, zero maintenance, high levels of reliability, impressive slaughter speeds and the flexibility to use it with any size or species. What’s not to like!’ said Pyne-Carter.

Ace Aquatec has moved to premises in Dundee’s new Waterfront Marina complex, from where it manages its rental and sales business, and from where partner company Ace Aquatec Solutions is developing new systems for aquaculture.

Ace Aquatec has selected Dynamic EMS as the manufacturing service partner of its stunner and company owner John Dignand said: ‘We are extremely pleased to be taking on the complete build of this unique product, and we look forward to supporting Ace as they upscale their production.

‘Within our facility in Dalgety Bay, Scotland, Dynamic EMS has the capacity to build 100 electric stunning machines per year, and has initial orders of five per month, which is a clear indicator that electronics manufacturing in the UK is alive and well.’

While Ace Aquatec can supply its stunning system in isolation, complete solutions are now on offer, too.

The stunner works by pumping salt or freshwater through a pipe and applying the appropriate parameters in the transport pipe to render the fish unconscious.

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Above (from top): Ace Aquatec’s 16in pipeline stunner on show in Brussels; the machine installed by Swiss Alpine Fish. Opposite (clockwise from top right): The sea bream and bass stunner on a barge at Nireus in Greece; pipeline stunner at Abick in Chile; Dynamic EMS’s factory in Scotland.

Pyne-Carter said the system needs a pump, so one of the most significant areas of progress has been a partnership with Danish/Spanish pump manufacturer Euskan.

Euskan’s range of suction pumps have facilitated the use of Ace Aquatec’s pipeline stunner as a pre pump stunning system- the first of its kind. Fish can be stunned from within the harvest cage before cortisol levels can increase as a result of stress in the pipe or pump.

‘Pre pump stunning will radically shift the way farms approach stunning,’ said Jens Andersen of Euskan. ‘It won’t be acceptable for farms to handle and stress fish after the transportation process.

This system is good for farms and good for humane slaughter.’

At the other end of the process, fish usually require bleeding. Ace Aquatec is supplying its stunner with bleeding equipment manufactured by Baader, and by integrating the two products into a seamless system, customers are achieving a complete solution from beginning to end.

Ace Aquatec has incorporated fish counters and its own biomass camera system into the pipeline stunning system to provide fish weights of stunned fish before the fish reach packaging.

Danish trout farmer Musholm took on an HSU stunner last year and installed it on the deck of its harvest boat. The electronics system is water cooled from the boat’s engine, allowing it to withstand the tough sea conditions.

Anders Lejbach, sea farm manager of Musholm, said: ‘The stunner is easy to work with; it works

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:28:09

Stunning advances

The “ system is

flexible enough to cater for any order

”

perfectly…and bleeding the fish is now much easier and efficient.’

Wild fish The harvest vessel installation at Musholm has gleaned much interest not just from other companies keen to adopt electric stunning in the transport pipe from their farm cages, but from wild catch vessel owners.

Ongoing conversations with supermarkets and their suppliers have brought into the spotlight the need for humane slaughter in wild fish catches, and many owners have been discussing how the equipment can be incorporated into vessels catching cod, saithe, haddock and mackerel.

The flexibility of the HSU allows it to be used on vessels, shore bases, recirculation factories and barges. What all have in common is that they are looking to adopt humane stunning for a range of species in line with local welfare standards.

Ace Aquatec claims that this flexibility in physical configuration at installation does not compromise humane slaughter, with 100 per cent of fish humanely slaughtered, regardless of size or species.

John Flett, process manager of Swiss Alpine Fish, recently installed a system at his firm’s land-based recirculation factory, which is rearing

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Innovation - Ace Aquatec.indd 57

salmon in Switzerland.

‘At Swiss Alpine Fish we are pleased at how the Ace stunner has been specially adapted to give us an excellent flow layout in our processing.’

And Nireus, one of the Mediterranean’s largest commercial producers of sea bass and bream, has described its use of the Ace Aquatec HSU as ‘promising’; while for Peter Zeller, CEO of Fresh Corporation, the equipment fits with the brand they offer.

His company’s yellowtail, bass and bream – reared in a land-based facility in Volklingen, Germany- require an appropriate system with high efficacy.

For him logistics and CO2 reduction play a large part in ensuring the products are sustainable, with humane slaughter key to the process.

‘The Ace Aquatec system and stunning technique is incredibly efficient.

Large and small quantities can be stunned to the same standard and this allows Fresh Corp to cater for any order without concern that welfare will be impacted. The system is flexible enough to cater for any order.

‘On top of this, the HSU is easy to operate and the German welfare authorities are pleased that humane slaughter can be guaranteed for any harvest.

‘Other slaughter techniques have difficulty to do that – either because unreliability means they are not used all of the time or because variability means they are not consistent enough.’

In other developments around the world, Abick is adding a further two stunners to its factory lines in Chile, stunning sea trout, Atlantic salmon and coho salmon; two machines are being shipped to Japan for yellowtail; and the first HSU for pangasius and sturgeon has gone into production.

Ace Aquatec said with the electric stunner now out of development, the focus is shifting to a new sea lice machine. Watch this space. FF

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08/05/2017 13:28:31

Innovation - AquaGen advertorial

Select salmon

Genomics helps farmers manage issues of commercial and environmental importance

T

HE exciting field of genomics is leading the way in improving breeding techniques for farmed fish. To some fish farmers this may seem to be a new idea, but genomics has been used for many years to advance the breeding of land animals and plants, to make them bigger, better performing or higher yielding. It has also been possible to select for resistance to a specific disease.

For example, Australian researchers have found 21,000 new genes across 16 common wheat varieties, and been able to show for the first time which varieties have genes that make them resistant to disease.

Genomics is the study of genomes, which are an organism’s blueprint of life. Every cell contains a complete genome encoded in the form of DNA, and the study of genomics has

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enabled scientists to unravel the DNA code to identify individual genes responsible for specific traits, or make improvements in traits controlled by many hundreds of genes.

As well as enhancing an animal’s resistance through genetic selection, genomics can also help scientists understand the viruses and bacteria that cause disease.

For example, tests have been developed that can test for a DNA sequence from a specific strain of virus or bacteria in a sample of blood, thereby enabling researchers to track the spread of infectious diseases, such as porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome (PRRS) in pigs.

Some of the most important traits studied for genetic improvement in aquaculture species include disease resistance, growth rate, tolerance to environmental stressors and flesh quality.

Farming companies in Scotland and Norway were quick to take the opportunity presented by genomic selection in the autumn of 2016 when taking in eggs from AquaGen. The first salmon fry hatched from GEN-innOva GAIN eggs, which were produced using up to two generations of genomic selection, are now growing in Scottish and Norwegian hatcheries, and will be put to sea as smolts in autumn this year.

The genomic selection was targeted at helping farmers to manage issues of greatest commercial and environmental importance, that is the sea lice problem and gill health issues.

Seawater is a highly variable environment, so well documented performance will be vital in understanding the genetic effects of the genomic selection that was carried out.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:29:39

Select salmon Resistance to sea lice is of paramount importance to the global salmon industry and AquaGen is the first to make notable advancements in this arena.

GEN-innOva GAIN uses two different selection methods to increase sea lice resistance: QTL (quantitative trait locus) selection and genomic selection.

AquaGen completed QTL searches in 2012 and 2014 from work that started in 2009. A significant QTL for sea lice susceptibility (QTL-innOva LICE) was found. This QTL is over represented in fish that have high sea lice numbers.

AquaGen worked with salmon farms in Norway and Scotland to document the effects of this QTL in commercial production situations.

The data obtained showed that fish with one copy of the unfavourable marker had, on average, 11 per cent more sea lice than fish without the marker, but fish with two copies of the marker had, on average, 28 per cent more sea lice compared to fish without the marker.

Genomic selection for sea lice resistance began in 2013 and was found to be far more effective than classic selection for sea lice resistance. After just one generation with genomic selection, it was possible to document a reduction in sea lice numbers following an infection challenge, between fish selected for high or low resistance of 20–25 per cent.

‘The more times we implement genomic selection for a single trait, the stronger the effect is. Two generations with genomic selection will provide a higher resistance against sea lice than one generation with genomic selection,’ said senior scientist at AquaGen, Jørgen Ødegård.

In collaboration with the Sea Lice Research Centre at the University of Bergen and the University of Life Sciences, AquaGen has spent the past two years studying fish with two generations of genomic selection for sea lice resistance.

Two separate sea lice challenge trials demonstrated a 54 per cent and 49 per cent reduction in sea lice, one day post infection challenge, on fish groups selected for high resistance. With 18 days post-challenge, the groups selected for high resistance still had 36 per cent and 32 per cent fewer sea lice respectively, compared to the low resistant fish.

However, QTL selection and genomics is only half the battle, as Ødegård explained: ‘The war against salmon lice can only be won by using a combination of preventative and treatment methods.

‘Breeding and genetics is one of the few methods that increase the fish’s resistance against sea lice throughout the whole production cycle.

‘Reduced risk of sea lice infection, robust fish that tolerate handling and fast growing fish that will shorten production time in the sea, are important contributors.’

When selecting broodstock, AquaGen chooses the healthiest fish, with a proven resistance to pancreas disease (PD), cardiomyopathy syndrome (CMS) and amoebic gill disease (AGD), which individually or together are a major cause of impaired heart and gill health.

‘We found a QTL for CMS that protects against heart damage and shows reduced mortality during CMS outbreaks. The effects of the QTL are confirmed both in field outbreaks and

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Innovation - AquaGen.indd 59

in controlled challenge tests,’ said Ødegård.

Similarly, AquaGen has been undertaking research to improve genomic selection of fish resistant to AGD and this work is ongoing.

In developing GEN-innOva GAIN, AquaGen has been able to offer its customers improved growth potential, with one to two months’ less time needed at sea to produce harvest weight fish.

It will take time to document in the field the effect of improvements in sea lice resistance, but the effect of selection for improved growth can begin much sooner in freshwater.

Estimated Genomic Breeding Values predicted 20 per cent increased growth potential, so how does early performance compare?

Early results are encouraging, (see Figs 1 and 2) and there is optimism based on clear scientific understanding of the power of genomic selection.

‘This is our most advanced offering, which gives salmon farmers the opportunity to produce healthy, disease and sea lice resistant fish, with a consequent enhancement of profits and a more stress free production cycle,’ said UK and Ireland representative at AquaGen, Andrew Reeve. FF

Opposite: Fig 1: Documented improved growth using genomic selection for broodfish candidates. Below: Fig 2:Comparative growth curves for 22 million fry.

Average weighto f GENinnOva GAIN increased c.f. QTL-innOva. This is the first data from the earliest freshwater phase.

It is one of the few “ methods that increase the

fish’s resistance against sea lice throughout the whole production cycle

”

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08/05/2017 13:30:00

Innovation – Peacock Salt advertorial

Making waves Artificial seawater has widespread appeal in aquaculture sector

T

EN years since its creation, Seamix artificial seawater mix is becoming a success story within the aquaculture industries in the UK and Ireland.

The DEFRA approved formula mix produced by leading UK salt company Peacock Salt has seen sales rocket by 40 per cent over the last two years with a retained customer base of more than 90 per cent.

So why is Seamix now making waves in the UK aquaculture industry?

Sales manager Peter Swan said: ‘The high costs involved in transporting liquids have made producing and maintaining shellfish stock difficult for inland producers.

‘A mix of the salts naturally found in seawater, Seamix allows you to create your own seawater simply by adding everyday tap water.’

With a rise in water-borne disease, paired with natural phenomena such as algal blooms, Seamix also offers peace of mind to producers

Seamix • A wide range

of applications, including lobster, oyster, mussel and prawn cultivation • Artificial seawater free from bacteria, algae and toxic detritus found in seawater

Peacock Salt North Harbour Ayr KA8 8AE Tel: 01292 292000 Email: info@peacocksalt.co.uk www.peacocksalt.com

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Above: XSeamix - free from parasites and bacteria

who simply can’t afford to lose large amounts of stock - another benefit of producing your own clean seawater on demand, free from parasites and bacteria.

It seems the proof is in the pudding.

Over the last two years bagged sales have increased by nearly 40 per cent and the number of customers by 45 per cent, with the majority of inquiries coming from recommendations and referrals from current users.

This, paired with invaluable customer feedback, led to a campaign drive in 2015 to spread awareness of this revolutionary product.

Results have shown that customer profiles have not changed. Prior to the campaign, customers were aquaculture practitioners, fishmongers and restaurants with live shellfish, and academic and industrial research departments.

In the 18 months since the campaign began, Peacock Salt has experienced growth across all these areas, indicating that Seamix still retains widespread appeal.

So what is Seamix?

Seamix is a granular material which, when added to tap water, creates artificial seawater. It is based on a DEFRA formula which stipulates the constituent salts required and their relative quantities to replicate a marine environment. Key points to note are: - It is popular in lobster and crab holding tanks, oyster production, bi-valve mollusc purification tanks and where natural seawater is in short supply; - The seawater created is clean, healthy and free from contamination; - Where premises are far from sources of natural seawater, Seamix is more cost-effective and practical than transporting liquid over long distances; - The 25kg and 15kg bag sizes make for ease of handling and easy storage; - To create an ocean environment of 3.5 per cent salinity, mix 3.5kg of Seamix per 100 litres of water; - For lesser salinities, simply increase or decrease the mixing ratio above accordingly.

So for 2.0 per cent salinity, use 2kg of Seamix per 100 litres of water. FF

Seamix “ offers peace of mind to producers who simply can’t afford to lose large amounts of stock

”

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:31:17

Innovation – Nutriad advertorial

Crucial components Functional feed additives to promote efficiency and health

BY DR PETER COUTTEAU

A

QUACULTURE is the fastest growing industry producing animal protein. Still, aquafeed production only represents four to five per cent of global animal feed production and is fragmented over many species and countries around the globe. This lack of critical mass limits research developments, particularly for tropical species of fish and shrimp.

At the same time, the young aquaculture industry suffers from several bottlenecks which must be solved to maintain its sustainable growth.

Solving these bottlenecks requires multi-disciplinary work and combined progress on different areas including breeding programmes, vaccine development, farm technology, husbandry, zonal hygiene management, and nutrition.

At Nutriad, we believe that functional feed additives, powered by natural, bio-active compounds with specific functional properties, are an important component to solve these key issues.

Functional feed additives that enhance digestive and metabolic processes are crucial to make novel feed formulations work within the limitations of the

digestive system of fish and shrimp. Potential products for improving digestion and feed utilisation in fish include botanical extracts and phytobiotic compounds, short and medium chain fatty acids, organic acids, enzymes, and natural emulsifiers.

However, it is difficult to predict the functionality of many of these products for a wide range of fish species. At Nutriad, a continuous programme of empiric screening for important aquaculture species aims at identifying promising compounds for application in aquaculture.

Farming operations for all major aquaculture species are under threat by disease. Health promoting feed additives are a crucial component of an effective disease prevention strategy and have become a standard ingredient in premium aquafeeds.

Functional feeds containing gut health promoters deliver with every meal an adequate concentration of natural antimicrobial activities into the digestive system. Our team works with producers to identify and resolve bottlenecks in aquaculture productivity by the application of our innovative functional feed additives. Find out more at www.nutriad.com FF

Above: Nutriad’s Ho Gim Chong and Maria Mercè Isern Subich sampling tilapia at a farm in Indonesia

operations for “allFarming major aquaculture species are under threat by disease

”

NUTRIAD: FEED ADDITIVES WITH AN ADDED HUMAN TOUCH Here at Nutriad, we’re just as concerned about the animals we feed, as about our clients – and their customers. Thus, we only produce the best feed additives and solutions possible, making sure your animals, in their turn, produce their best performance. And making sure your business thrives just as well.

We care for animals.

And people alike. www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

Nutriad.indd 61

Interested in how we can help your business thrive better? Find out more at www.nutriad.com or contact us directly.

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08/05/2017 13:32:45

Processing News

Seachill suitors line up

Mission to improve school dinners

Possible £75m price tag on Grimsby based processor

BY VINCE MCDONAGH

THE Icelandic Group will not be short of suitors for its Grimsby based Seachill fresh fish operation which it has recently put up for sale .

With its strong historic links to Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain, it presents an attractive proposition for any company looking to get a foothold in the highly lucrative UK retail sector.

Indeed, the company was founded in 1996 with the then exclusive purpose of supplying Tesco with fresh fish.

There is no doubt Tesco will be watching the sale process closely to ensure, in its view, the right bidder is chosen.

The growth of the Saucy Fish brand and its success breaking into

the US market will not have gone unnoticed.

Seachill´s revenues totalled £266.3 million last year, with EBITDA of £10.4 million, and it employs 750 people, plus around 400 agency workers, almost all in the Grimsby area.

On that calculation, the sale figure is likely to be between £75 million and £85 million - higher if there is enough competition.

Seachill managing director Simon Smith, who was also the driver behind the creation of Saucy Fish, said: ‘The business is in great shape, having successfully transitioned both customer and supply base, with a consistent multi year-on-year profit growth. This is a great

performance and means that we enter this process in a strong way and for the right reasons.

‘This sale process comes as no surprise and until concluded, will have no direct impact on our employees. This is a very positive next step for Seachill, its employees and partner customers, who place a high value on the business management and strategy, and it is likely that operations will continue in a similar way as present.’

The offers are certain to come from home and abroad. Young’s Seafood will certainly be interested if it can persuade its investors to find the cash, and it is already reported to have made inquiries.

That would keep the company in UK ownership and within a group which knows the seafood business inside out. However, Young’s has not been finding life easy since it lost a £90 million salmon processing contract to Marine Harvest two years ago.

Profits for the last financial year (to Sep-

tember 30, 2016) are reported to have dropped from around £15.3 million to £718,000.

Another UK business is the 2Sisters Food Group, owned by billionaire Ranjit Boparan.

It may be one of Tesco’s largest poultry suppliers but it also owns Five Star Fish in Grimsby and, ironically, it was Five Star which captured a sizeable share of the M&S seafood business from the Icelandic group last summer.

Also thought to be taking a keen interest is the Japanese fishing giant Nissui, which last month took full control of Sealord UK, the main fish supplier to the Waitrose chain. In the topsy-turvy world that is seafood processing today, Seachill has also been supplying some fish lines to Waitrose.

Another contender from the Far East is seafood giant Thai Union, owners of the John West brand, which has been buying into the Norwegian farmed fish business.

The announcement may well attract interest from Norwegian salmon

UK ownership Seafood “willYoung’s certainly be interested ”

companies, who would dearly like to get into the UK retail market, and there are many big names with the cash.

The big North American processors will not be sitting back either.

The most prominent name is Canada’s High Liner Foods, the continent’s leading processor and provider of value added frozen seafood.

The two companies are associated in that High Liner sells some products under the Icelandic brand.

The Reykjavik based Icelandic Group has been selling off its overseas operations bit by bit over the past few years. The parent company is the Iceland Enterprise Investment Fund, which must believe it can get a better return for its members by investing elsewhere.

Iceland ups its stake in Norway ICELAND’S Samherji Group has increased its stake in the Norwegian integrated fishing company Nergård.

In a joint move announced in April, Samherji raised its holdings to 39.9 per cent while the Norwegian salmon and white fish processor Norsk Sjømat raised its stake to 60.1 per cent.

The two companies are looking to invest in the processing, manufacturing and development of new white fish products in Northern Norway.

Nergård is an integrated fishery group whose

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business activities include catching, processing and sales. It is also Northern Norway’s second largest in this field, with more than 470 employees.

Norsk Sjømat has been a co-owner of Nergård since 2010 and controlled about 42 per cent of the company before the new acquisition.

Samherji, which has a large fishing fleet and processing operation in Iceland, Europe and the UK, became a co-owner in 2014 when it took a 22 per cent stake.

Norsk Sjømat CEO Per Magne Grøndahl said: ‘We want Nergård AS to develop from being a supplier of raw materials and semi-finished products to becoming a manufacturer of finished products.

‘A lot of this value added processing will take place in Northern Norway. Our position is that processing and manufacturing as close to the source of raw materials as possible is key to delivering the world’s best products.’

Norsk Sjømat’s recipe for success has been high product yield in the processing of salmon and the continuous development of new products.

Now this experience and expertise will help to develop similar solutions for the processing of white fish.

A GRIMSBY seafood company has set out on a dual mission to develop new products and make fish more appealing to youngsters.

William Hobson Ltd has recruited former Young’s Seafood executive Dave Norsden as its new customer development director to create new seafood ideas for school dinners.

Bill Hobson, owner and founder of William Hobson, said: ‘Obesity among youngsters is a big problem today so we plan to make fish attractive to children so they have a tasty and healthy alternative to pizzas and burgers.’

Founded in 1971, William Hobson employs around 20 people producing fish mostly for the food service sector. Supplying schools makes up a large part of that business.

The company has a modern processing factory, which complies with the highest British Retail Consortium (BRC) grade, facing out to sea on Grimsby’s North Wall.

Norsden retired recently after 40 years at Young’s in Grimsby during which time he built a formidable reputation in the food service business.

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:34:37

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EQUIPMENT SUPPLIEER & NETS DIVINGCAGES SERVICES

CAGES NETS CAGE&LIGHTING

Buffodine Egg Disinfectant

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Specialise

Aeration Fish - Oxyg Rou Besp - Depura Depur Holding

Aqua Aquac

36, Foxdenton Lane, Middleton, MOHN36, AQUAFo GR Tel +44 (0) 1309 6 Manchester M24 1QG M Tel: +44(0)161 6835869 MOHN GROUP Te M Java Craignure MDive DiveLtd. Ltd.11 11AQUA JavaHouses, Houses, Craignure MOHN GROUP +44 AQUA (0)1772 322200 MOH MOHN AQUA GROUP The Enterprise Park, Forres,PA65 IV36 2AB, Scotland, UK 07715 007964 Isle of Argyll 6BE Isle ofMull, Mull, Argyll PA65 6BE MOHN AQUA GROUP TheMobile: Enterprise Park, Forres, IV36 2AB, Scotland, UK M MOHN AQUA GROUP The E TelFax+44 (0) Tel +44 (0) 1309 678270 +44 (0) 13091309 673615 678270 info@mohnaqua.com Tel +44 (0) export@evansvanodine.co.uk Tel +44 (0) 1309E: 678270 Fax +44 (0) 13091309 673615 678270 info@mohnaqua.com sales@aquacultureequipment.co.uk TelFax+ www.egersundnet.no Tel +44 (0) 1309E: 678270 sales@ t: t:01680 01680812 812420 420 m: m:07585 07585801 801906 906 info@mohnaqua.com W: www.AquacultureEquipment.co.uk info@mohnaqua.com www. evansvanodine.co.uk e:e:mdiveltd@live.co.uk W: www. mdiveltd@live.co.uk info MOHN AQUA AQUA GROUP GROUP The The Enterprise Enterprise Park, Park, Forres, Forres, IV36 IV36 2AB, 2AB, Scotland, Scotland, UK UK MOHN Tel +44 +44 (0) (0) 1309 1309 678270 678270 Fax Fax +44 +44 (0) (0) 1309 1309 673615 673615 info@mohnaqua.com info@mohnaqua.com Tel

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• Sea Bed Surveys Aeration Equipment - Fish Feeders • Cleaning of Sub Surface Structures - Oxygen Monitoring Systems • Mooring Inspections/maintenance/installation Round•PE Rearing Tanks Detailed Reporting Fabricated •Bespoke High Spec video evidence ofTanks every dive • Emergency Call Outs - Depuration Equipment - Lobster • Well Boat Attendance Holding Systems - Oyster Baskets • Cavi-Blasting Aquaculture• Salvage Equipment Ltd • Bespoke Dive Drills 36, Foxdenton Lane, Middleton, • Boat Hire Skipper Manchesterwith M24 1QG • Dedicated, professional & highly trained Tel: +44(0)161 6835869 permanent teams

Mobile: 07715 007964 w: m-dive.co.uk E: sales@aquacultureequipment.co.uk e: mdiveltd@live.co.uk t: 01680 812913/07585 801906 W: www.AquacultureEquipment.co.uk

• WINTEC AND HYDROTECH DRUM FILTERS •• Pumping MILANESE GRADING MACHINES • VENERONI PROPELLER PUMPS • Grading • WINTEC FISH VACUUM PUMPS 4-10” • Feeding • INLET AND OUTLET GRILLS • DAMMING AND SLUICE GATES

Manufacturer and dealer of fish ROBUST farming equipment.

ACCURATE

Other equipment available on request.

Your partner in Aquaculture Technology

• WINTEC AND HYDROTECH DRUM FILTERS INTELLIGENT • MILANESE GRADING MACHINES THE•BEST VENERONIQUALITY/PRICE PROPELLER PUMPS • WINTEC FISH VACUUM PUMPS 4-10” • INLET AND OUTLET GRILLS • DAMMING AND SLUICE GATES Your partner in Aquaculture Technology Other equipment available on request.

AKVA group is a unique supplier with the Tel: +45 97181977 capability of offering both Sea and Land Fax: +45operations 9642 5278 Based Aquaculture with complete technical solutions and local support.

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AKVA group is a unique supplier with the +45both 97181977 capabilityTel: of offering Sea and Land Based Aquaculture with complete Fax: +45operations 9642 5278 technical solutions and local support.

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The new generation Dive Company based on Isle of Mull & working throughout Scotland to raise Customer Service, Productivity & Safety Standards in Commercial Diving specializing in but not limited to the Fish Farm Industry.

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Manufacturer and dealer of fish 049-051_ff11.indd ROBUST farming equipment.

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A Anew newgeneration generationDive DiveCompany Companybased basedononIsle IsleofofMull Mullworking workingtogether togethertotoraise raise Customer CustomerService, Service,Productivity Productivity&&Safety SafetyStandards StandardsininCommercial CommercialDiving Diving specialising specialisingininbut butnot notlimited limitedtotothetheFish FishFarm Farmindustry. industry.

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08/05/2017 10:57:00

Opinion – Inside track

The pen is mightier

BY NICK JOY

S

O it appears that after all these years some of the old ways are being reconsidered, or so I am told. Smaller and square pens are being openly discussed as better alternatives if you want to manage lice well, or if you ever have to treat.

Neither is any surprise to me but it shows the size of the issues that the salmon industry is facing, as the cost implications of both are not inconsiderable.

In a market such as is occurring just now, this may seem a good idea but remember what happens to the oil industry when the price of oil falls. I think the SNP will remember it for some time to come and so should we.

Scotland’s farms have to be cost competitive with Norway or they won’t exist. Of course, this all depends on whether a relatively easy solution to lice is found, which can operate in large pens.

If so, and that’s a big if, production will become comparatively simple again and the price will fall.

Until this happens the role of strategist in this industry becomes difficult. Do you accept a significant increase in capital expenditure and a long-term pressure on depreciation, or persevere in the low cost approach on the basis that sooner or later it will be cracked?

My guess is that companies are starting to look at different horses for different courses.

There are some sites that need all the help and some that are less demanding. Balancing risk may give enough time to allow for development.

Of course, a strong market gives companies robustness for a certain length of time, but I think sea lice will be with us for a long time and so strategies will have to take this into account.

But there will be other pressures and these will come to bear over the next few years as well.

Brexit is not proving the disaster that a lot of people thought it might.

(I know, some people would add ‘yet’!) As I have said before, there will be shocks and demands from Brexit just as there are being in the EU. The pound is very low against the dollar and euro, which is valuable for an exporter and far outweighs the feed cost increase.

This balance may easily change, especially with the rise of Marine le Pen in France. Even if the far right did not win the election earlier this month, the EU is looking considerably more wobbly than it was a couple of years ago.

It is hard to predict the way the US will go under Trump but it would be surprising if there was not a lot of nervousness about the dollar, also making this export outlet one to watch.

A great market is always a fantastic time to do business but it is also the best time to plan forward.

They say that the best companies always increase their marketing budgets at the top and bottom of the market. So maybe now is time to think more about how we present ourselves.

Certainly, our image has improved enormously in the last 10 years.

Maybe the same number of nutters still exist out there, determined to believe against all the evidence that aquaculture is a bad thing.

If there are, they aren’t getting the traction they used to and it is notable that they are usually represented in papers with tiny readerships. This does not mean that we should be in any way complacent.

Our industry, whether it is mussels or salmon, has an impact, as all industries do, and we have to mitigate it and work with those who are trying to conserve.

As long as both sides are working for the betterment of the area,

66

Nick Joy.indd 66

Almost “ every word

in the English language, apart from prison, is better than cage

”

there should be no reason that it cannot be a pleasant process.

What I would say to my friends in conservation is that it makes discussion a lot easier if you understand the business that you are trying to work with.Visit and discuss what we do and why we do it.

Most farmers on land and sea love nature and love having it around. Our markets like the idea of it, but like the idea of a low price a whole lot more.

We need help to develop practices and discussion on mitigation. Confrontation rarely works and usually results in stalemate.

To the salmon industry, I want to bring out an old chestnut, but beg for its relevance today.

Do we have to keep using the word ‘cage’? I mean, can you find a word with worse connotations? Has no one heard of caged chickens?

I even once had a Swiss customer write a standard for us that said our fish were not to be kept in metal cages.

For an industry that has developed so far in marketing, when will we properly kill off this word?

Pen is fine, enclosure is better. Nets are wonderful. Actually, almost every word in the English language, apart from prison, is better than cage.

FF

www.fishfarmer-magazine.com

08/05/2017 13:35:34

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08/05/2017 11:14:57

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