What’s hot for Chilean investors? Salmon farms
Hey, if John Fredriksen can do it… A smaller league perhaps, but successful businessmen from Santiago are studying what is happening down south – a booming salmon industry and new players (with no salmon experience) joining the game. Last year, when some of Chile’s commercial fishing giants began investing in salmon farming operations, (pesquea El Golfo and Itata for example), most professionals who’ve built their careers in the original salmon companies scoffed, saying they’ll never make it because they don’t know what they’re getting into. This year however, quite a few of those same professionals are receiving better offers for career opportunity from the new companies. The aftermath of the giant merges such as the new Marine Harvest left many professionals and workers with years of experience on the street, of whom are eager to join a new company that values their know-how. Thus, these “rookie” salmon producers aren’t nearly as inexperienced as their predecessors were at first – instead they’re starting with clean (and supposedly disease-free) farm sites, the latest technologies, and with an experienced workforce for every step of the production chain. On top of this, they are starting with healthier, genetically stronger fish. In Elberg’s case, according to the Diario Financiaro, he closed a deal with Aquagen to supply his company River Fish with the eggs it will need to reach an initial harvest capacity of 20 thousand tons by 2011.
