The Annual Fish Farm Production Survey 2012: 2012 was a top year for Scottish salmon production
Siri Elise Dybdal
The Scottish Annual Fish Farm Production Survey 2012 was released by the Scottish Government in September. It collects information from all the companies engaged in freshwater and seawater farming of fish in Scotland, representing the entire industry. Production survey information was collected from the 28 companies actively involved in the freshwater production of Atlantic salmon farming 100 active sites, as well as from all 22 companies actively involved in Atlantic salmon production, farming 257 active sites
Increased production The production survey shows that despite the background of challenging global and domestic market conditions, the Scottish salmon farming industry continues to grow both in production volume and as an employer with staff figures rising.
The total production of Atlantic salmon increased by 2.7% in 2012 to 162,223 tonnes. This follows on from a 2.5% increase in 2011 and is the highest production recorded since the top year 2003.
The survey also shows increases in the production of grilse but a decrease in the production of pre-salmon and salmon.
However, harvest in 2013 is forecasted to drop by 6 per cent to 152,507.
Fewer companies The number of firm actively engaged in the freshwater production remained at 28 in 2012. A total of 100 sites were actively engaged in commercial production, which was two more than in 2011. The number of companies authorised and actively producing salmon in 2012 was 16, a de-crease of five on the 2011 figure. Six companies remained active and authorised, although not producing salmon for harvest in 2012. This continued the trend of salmon production being concentrated within fewer com-panies. These 22 companies have 257 registered active sites, although not all active sites may have produced fish for harvest in 2012. Seven of the active seawater cage sites seven were certified as organic producing 4,597 tonnes. This is the third year that data on organic production have been reported.
