SalMar announces £63m factory in northern Norway
SalMar, co-owner of Scottish Sea Farms, is to spend NOK675 million (£63m) on a salmon slaughter and processing plant at Lenvik municipality in Troms, northern Norway.
The facility, planned to be ready for use by the second half of 2020, will be one of the world’s most advanced facilities for processing and processing salmon, said SalMar’s Gustav Witzøe.
“The coastal zone in our northernmost part of the country is, by nature, a bit of an Eldorado with good growth conditions for Atlantic salmon due to the meeting of the Gulf Stream and the Norwegian Sea,” added Witzøe.
“The distance to the major markets presents a cost disadvantage that SalMar wants to outweigh by establishing a coherent, integrated value chain.”
Value chain
Witzøe said SalMar’s new state-of-the-art fish farm in Tranøy ensured deliveries of smolts to its marine facilities in the north. “With our new salmon factory in Lenvik we will also be able to process and process the salmon when it is ready for slaughter,” said Witzøe.
“In this way we will have established the complete value chain in the north. This value chain will be made even more robust after SalMar’s significant investment in the purchase of new farming licences at auction, to ensure stable supply of raw material to the new plant. This will, in general, mean that SalMar will in the future directly supply large parts of the world with healthy seafood, wholly produced, and directly delivered from northern Norway.
