Salmon farmer Loch Duart blames finance costs for £3.2m loss 

Scotland salmon farmer Loch Duart increased harvest volume and revenue during the 2024-25 financial year but reported a loss of more than £3.2 million, a significant part of which was due to costs related to a bond issue that raised £42.7m for expansion.

The company farms fish at sites in Sutherland and the Hebrides but has also been developing sites off Skye that it bought from Scottish Sea Farms in 2022.

“During the year funds were raised on the Nordic bond market to enable the company to make the investments in infrastructure and operational capacity,” Loch Duart said in its annual report published by Companies House today.

It added that two requirements for raising funds that way were that Loch Duart had to change from being a private limited company to a public limited company, and had to adopt a different accounting standard.

Outgoings included paying £5.8m to lease creditors and £1.73m in interest payments. It ended the year with net cash of £37.3m from its financing activities.

Increasing production

“The group continues to work on increasing production through new sites and to develop the potential of existing sites. At the year end, the planned investments and fish inputs were proceeding in line with the plan outlined in the group’s Investment Memorandum on which the bond funds were raised,” wrote Loch Duart’s directors in their Strategic Report for the year.

Turnover increased to £55m from £44m the year before, with harvest volume up to 5,620 gutted weight tonnes (2023-24: 3,893 gwt) and gross profit (revenue minus cost of sales) up from £10.72m to £12.06m. But administrative expenses jumped from £9.8m to £14.2m and finance costs rose by £2m to £2.7m, leading to a loss before tax of £3.84m compared to a pre-tax profit of £0.7m in 2023-24. After a tax rebate, Loch Duart made a post-tax loss of £3.2m.

Biological assets

On a more positive note, Loch Duart’s property, plant and equipment were valued at £57.6m at the end of March this year, compared to £32m a year earlier.

And the value of biological assets - eggs, juveniles, smolts, and fish in the sea – at March 31 this year was almost £41.3m, up from £22.5m at the end of the previous financial year.

Loch Duart finished 2024-25 with total assets worth almost £140m, almost double the valuation of £74m at the end of the previous year, but debt from loans and borrowings had increased from £5.7m to £65.8m. Increases in other liabilities meant that the fish farmer ended 2024-25 with net assets £48.1m, only mariginally higher than the £47.9m it had the year before.