Salmones Camanchaca expects improved results in Q4

Christian Pérez For example, the company expects that the average price per Kg of Atlantic salmon WFE will be 27 percent higher this year (~US$ 4.9-5.2) compared to 2012. This projection is strongly fostered by the US$ 5.7/Kg recorded in Q3 2012 and the US$ 5.8-6.1/Kg expected in the fourth quarter. Likewise, the company expects a slight increase in its Atlantic salmon harvests from close to 31,100 tonnes in 2012 to around 33,000 tonnes in 2013. Salmones Camanchaca also informed about worse mortality rates and FCRs expected for 2013 compared to the previous year. However, the company showed improved results in Q3 2013 compared to the previous quarter and even better results expected for Q4 2013. The company reported a 20 percent mortality rate for Atlantic salmon in Q2 2013, a 10 percent mortality rate in the following quarter and expects to report a mortality rate of around 10-13 percent in the last three months of this year. Similarly, the FCR for this species has improved from 1.53 in Q2 2013 to 1.42 in Q3 2013 and is expected to continue decreasing to 1.32 in Q4 2013. Regarding production costs, Camanchaca informed about a negative trend starting last February, which quickly increased costs by almost 50% around May this year. Later, production costs started to decrease and returned to normal levels in August 2013. In this same topic, the company expects fishmeal prices to decrease to around US$ 1,300-1,500 per tonne in Q4 2013 which compares positively with prices over US$ 1,800 per tonne recorded in the first half of this year.