Giant feed barge is built to handle the rough stuff
GroAqua has delivered the 1,100-tonne capacity vessel to Bakkafrost in the Faroes
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The new barge was built at GroAqua's shipyard in Szczecin, Poland, before arriving in the Faroe Islands on April 14.
GroAqua, which was founded in the Faroe Islands in 1972, has in recent years invested heavily in large feed barges for exposed farming locations and has also built up operations in Scotland, Denmark, and Poland.
"The barge has been delivered to the customer and has already been put into use at the location," Kristian Andreasen, sales manager for feed barges at GroAqua, tells Fish Farming Expert's Norwegian sister site, Kyst.no.
With a capacity of 1,100 tonnes of feed divided into 18 silos, this is one of the larger barges GroAqua has delivered to Bakkafrost in recent years. The 48-metre-long and 13-metre-wide barge is equipped with 24 feeding lines, each line connected directly to one cage.
"The fleet is designed for direct feeding, and feeding is controlled through GroVision with pellet detection," explains Andreasen.
On board, GroAqua's own GroFeeder and GroVision feeding and monitoring systems are installed. The barge also has three generators, a crane on the silo deck and an aeration system, but will mainly be powered by shore power.
16 feed barges
Bakkafrost states that the fleet will be used at the Lambavik site, which produces around 10,000 tonnes of salmon per farming cycle.
"The location is an area that is open to the sea, with a significant wave height of 5.5 metres," says Jon Purkhus, farming manager north at Bakkafrost.
According to Purkhus, 1.65 million smolts were stocked at the site in July 2025.
The facilities on board are relatively simple and primarily adapted for service personnel. Andreasen explains that all feeding is controlled from the remote feeding centre, so that the crew does not need to spend much time out on the raft.
Bakkafrost uses direct feeding, and this is the second barge of this type that GroAqua has delivered to Bakkafrost. At the same time, Purkhús informs that another new barge is on its way to the company.
"The barge will be delivered to us in June. We currently have a total of 15 barges from GroAqua. When the next one is delivered in June, we will have a total of 16 barges from the supplier," says Purkhus.
The construction process for the new fleet took around 10 months, but delivery to the Faroe Islands was slightly delayed due to bad weather during transport.
