Marine Harvest heading as far south as possible
Regarding Marine Harvest’s situation in Chile, Leif Frode Onarheim summed it up in very understandable terms in an interview with Reuters late last week. Challenging and no fun. After a recent board meeting in Oslo it was decided that the company should move out of Region X and look for healthier waters in Region XII (Magallanes), Chile’s southernmost region. Region XI (Aysén) is already relatively filled with farming licenses, and a farm site in the region belonging to Mainstream (Cermaq) has screened positive for the virus. Marine Harvest does not yet have any farming licenses in Magallanes, and the process of acquiring a license is bureaucratically complicated. The ISA virus has hit Marine Harvest’s farms the hardest, obligating the company to sacrifice tens of thousands of fish, and over a hundred jobs for workers on farm sites and processing plants. According to a report from El Mercurio, the disease has cost the company US$17 million so far.
