Riverfish Salmon owner investing full steam ahead
Despite the cloud of doom currently portrayed for Chile’s salmon industry there are of course some investors, Fredrikson included, who pay more attention to the silver lining of the long term. Eduardo Elberg, Chilean businessman and sole owner of the financial holding group Algeciras, maintains an ambitious investment plan in food production, car imports and distribution, and construction. According to El Mercurio, general manager Andrés Solari of the holding Algeciras explains that one of the holding’s top projects is Riverfish, a salmon production company that started from ground zero last year in Chile’s southernmost Magallanes Region. The company chose this region for two reasons; first, a big tax break provided by the government as incentive to attract investors to the Magallanes region, and second, the region does not yet have the serious fish health problems that hinder the Lakes Region and are beginning to the Aysén Region. Algeciras group is investing US$ 50 million in Riverfish and plans to reach a production level of 18 thousand tons by 2011.
