An animation of the proposed Proximar salmon RAS facility in Japan. Video: Proximar.

Japan on-land salmon project raises £34.4m

Proximar Seafood AS, which plans an on-land salmon farm in Japan, has raised NOK 400 million (£34.4m), it announced today.

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The company intends to produce 6,300 tonnes of salmon annually in a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility situated approximately an hour’s drive from Tokyo.

The private placement attracted very strong interest from Norwegian, Nordic and international high-quality institutional investors and family offices and was more than 10 times oversubscribed, excluding NOK 120m-worth of shares pre-allocated to Nutreco International BV and cornerstone investors. Dutch feed producer Nutreco, which owns Skretting, was granted 2.7 million shares for NOK 35m.

Grieg family

In addition, some Proximar directors were allocated shares for NOK 43.1m. These included the Grieg family, who hold a majority stake in Norway, Canada and Scotland salmon farmer Grieg Seafood. The family, represented in the Proximar board by Per Grieg and Thomas Grieg, were allocated 1.4 million shares for NOK 22.9m.

“We are excited about the significant investor interest and support for Proximar,” said founder and chief executive Joachim Nielsen. “We are now on track and will commence construction of the facility over the next months, bringing us one step closer to serving fresh Atlantic salmon on Japanese dinner plates on the same day as harvest.”