Investing in a RAS would be a cheaper way of
buying salmon farming capacity than acquiring shares of Bakkafrost or Marine
Harvest, Nordic Aquafarms CEO Erik Heim said. Nordic Aquafarms, which is building a massive
land-based salmon farming using recirculating aquaculture technology (RAS) in
Maine, says it can match the operating costs of sea-pen farms without even
taking into consideration transport costs. That's where RAS has a big advantage over
sea-pen farming, said Nordic Aquafarms CEO Erik Heim. A salmon farm in Maine
only has to truck its salmon to a cold storage facility in major urban centers
such as Boston or New York, costing only a fraction of the money required to
send fish via air freight from farms in Chile and Norway, he claimed. That makes RAS arguably more competitive than
sea-pen farming, Heim said. Besides the farm planned for Belfast, Maine, Nordic Aquafarms plans a second phase of its
Fredrikstad Seafoods operation, which would make the site Europe's largest
land-based salmon farm. The first phase of the farm is scheduled to be
commissioned later this year. "If you buy shares in Marine Harvest or
Bakkafrost you will be paying for a kilo of fish than if you are investing in
this," Nordic Aquafarms CEO Erik Heim told Undercurrent News. Marine Harvest's shares have more than doubled
since 2014 to more than NOK 160 ($19.53) a share. Over that timeframe, harvest
volumes have decreased from 418,873 metric tons in 2014 to 370,346t last year.
Nordic Aquafarms is spending about $150 million to add 13,000t of salmon
farming capacity at the first phase of its Maine farm scheduled for completion
in 2020. Nordic Aquafarms plans to build Maine capacity
out to 33,000t in subsequent phases, requiring a total investment of up to
$500m. The Belfast location, the site of a former water utility, was chosen
because it has sufficient saltwater and freshwater sources to serve all
expansion phases and close access to Highway 1, to ship salmon to the US
Northeast Corridor. Heim predicts that the salmon industry will need
sea-pen, offshore and land-based farming to supply a global market with a
fast-growing appetite for Atlantic salmon. Previous failures in RAS farming
methods don't necessarily make land-based a riskier business than coastal
farming, Heim said. The quality of individual projects on each of these
production methods is as important as the method itself, he said. Sea-pen farming requires costly infrastructure
such as fuel-guzzling sea vessels, and RAS farms suffer fewer mortalities than
coastal farms, Heim said. This is an argument that Heim will ultimately
make when Nordic Aquafarms seeks to diversify its shareholder base in a bid to
expand operations globally although the company is well financed, for now, he
said. "Right now we have plenty of financial
capability," Helm said. "It's just a matter of having more anchor investors to
lean on as you start scaling big things." Nordic Aquafarms plans to grow other species in
RAS farms, adding to its yellowtail farm, Sashimi Royal, in Denmark. Nordic Aquafarms said the main challenge in
developing the Maine site is permitting and getting community acceptance in
Belfast, a well-to-do town that still has an active shipbuilding industry. Part
of the difficulty in getting that acceptance lies in explaining how RAS farming
works, Heim said. The company hired David Noyes, who ran a RAS farming
operation, as its chief technology officer, earlier this month. 
Source: Undercurrent News
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