A 'hole' lot of progress for Gigante
On-land salmon farmer has completed excavation of its first raceway basin and will stock smolts in September
Gigante Salmon, which is developing a 19,000-tonne (whole fish equivalent) on-land salmon farm in Norway, will stock the first of three separate five-metre-deep raceway systems with 1.1 million smolts in September, it said today.
The company is excavating three rectangular “basins” in the bedrock of an island (Indre Rosøya) off Norway’s west coast. Basin 3 has been fully excavated and will be lined with concrete and a liner/membrane before being fitted with three raceways. Installation of equipment will begin in the current quarter and continue until mid-July, Gigante said in its report for the fourth quarter of 2022.
Blasting for the excavation of the other two basins should be finished by the end of this month.
Design change
Lining basin 3 was not part of the original design but has been included to promote fish health.
“This will improve living conditions. It will also allow for more secure regulation of the water level between the raceways during operation, and in the event of a stoppage in the water supply from one or more pumps,” Gigante wrote.
“For now, this only applies to production basin 3. A decision about whether to implement the same measure in production basins 1 and 2 will be made after production basin 3 is taken into use.”
Establishing one production basin first will help the company make technological choices and be aware of their associated costs in advance of completion of the remaining production basins in the summer of 2024.
During Q4, agreements were concluded with the feed supplier (Skretting), the inlet-pump supplier (Xylem) and the firm that will pour the concrete in the production basins (Infrakon), Gigante reported.
“The project is proceeding according to plan, and we expect production to begin in September,” said Gigante in a press release accompanying its Q4 report.
“Our plans call for only production basin 3 to be ready when the facility comes on-line this autumn. Excavation of production basins 1 and 2 is due to be completed by this time, as will much of the facility’s infrastructure.
Technological choices
“Establishing one production basin first will help us make technological choices and be aware of their associated costs in advance of completion of the remaining production basins in the summer of 2024,” said chief executive Helge E W Albertsen.
Gigante expects continuous production from the second half of 2024. It intends to harvest 5,300 gutted weight tonnes of salmon through to the autumn of 2025, when a second batch of the same size will be ready for harvest.
The company will stock 3.3 million smolts in H2 2025, enabling full production of 16,000 gwt from mid-2026 onwards.
