UK salmon smoker plans 120,000t salmon RAS in US

Brown is the former owner of Macknight Food Group smoked salmon plants in Florida and Nevada and owns Grants Smokehouse Ltd in his home county of Cumbria in northern England.

He told Undercurrent that he has bought a 90-acre site in Maryland which is “fully licensed” to farm up to 60,000 tonnes. There is another site next to it which would could be used to produce another 60,000 tonnes.

Egg-to-retail-pack

According to the report, Brown plans an “egg-to-retail pack” recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility and is seeking to raise $150 million to build the operation, which would be called American Salmon.

“We have the water supply and water treatment plant operational licensed and running,” Brown told Undercurrent.

“We have just finished a 15,000-square-foot building for the hatchery and the business model is to be the first fully-integrated from egg to retail pack of smoked salmon and dog treat packs.”

The target is for 30,000 tonnes of production by 2026, with the $150m financing the first stage of 15,000 tonnes, the report said.

Local supermarkets

Brown told the website that American Salmon would partner with three local supermarkets and grow on-site exclusively for them in their own tanks, “meeting every level of sustainability and accreditation possible”.

The 30% of the fish not used for human consumption would be turned into pet food products on site, for sale in the UK and the US.

Brown is already selling salmon-based pet treats branded Snif-Snax and made in Maryport, Cumbria, where Grants is based. The plan would be to shift the production to Maryland, according to the report.

The businessman told Undercurrent he was looking for a salmon farming partner “with at least 30 years’ experience in the salmon industry, the same as I’ve got in processing”, and that he had been in talks with several Norwegian groups and another from the US.

Several projects

American Salmon is the latest of several RAS salmon farming initiatives in the US. Nordic Aquafarms plans a 33,000-tonne farm in Belfast, Maine and Whole Oceans intends to build a RAS facility a few miles upriver on the site of a former paper mill in Bucksport. It would eventually produce 50,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon per year.

A third Maine RAS is proposed in Millinocket by UK-based Aquabanq, which aims for an annual production of 10,000 tonnes of salmon by 2025.

Pure Salmon, owned by investment fund 8F, plans to produce 20,000 tonnes of salmon in Virginia, while the biggest project of them all is Atlantic Sapphire’s land-based facility in Miami, where it is intended to eventually produce 200,000 tonnes of salmon per annum.