Trine Danielsen has relinquished her seat on the SalMar board.

SalMar director steps down after taking government post

Trine Danielsen has resigned from the board of Norwegian salmon farmer SalMar following her appointment as state secretary in the country’s Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries.

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Danielsen has stepped step down with immediate effect, and a new board member will be elected at the company’s next AGM, said SalMar, the co-owner of Scottish Sea Farms.

A state secretary is second in rank to a government minister, and serve as a de facto vice minister.

Vast experience

Danielsen was brought into government by new fisheries and seafood minister Geir-Inge Sivertsen, who replaced the Progress Party’s Harald Tom Nesvik when that party withdrew from the governing coalition in a row about the repatriation of an Islamic State bride and her two children.

The vastly experienced Danielsen started her professional career as a head of smolt production in Skorildsmolt in the early 1990s, then became feed consultant for EWOS at the end of the same decade and then production manager in Timar in Portugal (sea bass and sea bream) in the first half of the 2000s.

Mayor of Hjelmeland

From 2004 to 2011 she was head of the Center for Aquaculture Competence (CAC), a large-scale salmon farming R&D facility owned by Mowi, Skretting and AKVA Group, before becoming mayor of Hjelmeland Municipality in the period 2011 to 2015.

She was chief executive of BluePlanet Academy, which claims to be the world’s largest e-larning platform on aquaculture, from 2019 until her appointment as state secretary.

Danielsen has a degree in aquaculture engineering from the University of Bergen (1991), an Msc in zoology from NTNU (1995) and a business administration from the University of Nordland (2009).