Marine Harvest Chile invests in smoked salmon
Kate Casey
Starting in March of 2009 Marine Harvest Chile will put back into operation the first plant that it shut down due to the company’s ISA crisis. In April of this year Marine Harvest shut down the Chinquihue plant two months sooner than promised to 700 workers on account of the escalating cost of keeping it in operation. According to Aqua.cl the plant was built in the 1980’s and expands over 11,000 m2 of constructed space. Since its closure the plant has been up for sale but with no offers. Prior to his post as managing director of Marine Harvest Chile, Álvaro Jiménez was the general manager of his own smoked salmon company, Delifish, since 1995. In the year 2006 Fjord Seafood acquired Delifish and kept Jiménez as acting manager of the company. In 2007 Fjord merged with Marine Harvest and Jiménez was designated as division manager of value added products. He was promoted to general manager of the company in July of this year, and proposed the new business plan to Marine Harvest ASA, emphasizing value added products as the way to commercialize the company’s exports while production levels are low.
Photograph: Claudio Tapia
