Marine Harvest's RAS hatchery at Inchmore is well on the way to completion. Photo: Marine Harvest

Hatchery ‘ready for eggs by mid-December’

Construction work at Marine Harvest's hatchery at Inchmore, Glenmoriston is making progress as the build continues into its 54th week.

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The final sections of the roof will be installed by the end of next week and work is well under way inside.

Project manager John Richmond said: "It's progressing. I think we may be two to three weeks behind our original programme but still within the dates that we require for stocking the fish. We're looking to bring eggs in mid-December this year, and that'll be to produce smolts in August next year.

"The steelwork is almost finished, they are progressing with the cladding which is well over the building now and the walls are going up at the same time. Inside the building we have our process engineers, IAT, who are doing all of the aquacultural engineering on this project. They're in at the moment on the intake water sterilisation and the egg incubation systems and progressing well, and the electrical contractor, OES, are in the building now as well and starting their containment and trunking.

"The construction's far enough ahead of the process and electrical engineers now that it's really over to them and they're quite confident of meeting our deadlines."

Inchmore Hatchery turf cutting ceremony last July. Highland Council's Margaret Davidson with, from left, Stephen McCaig, Marine Harvest Construction Manager, John Richmond, MH Freshwater Manager, Steve Bracken, MH Business Support Manager and Mick Watts, MH Group Engineer. Photo: Marine Harvest

The new hatchery is of a similar design to Marine Harvest's hatchery at Lochailort,  but a different style of degassing and a two-stage form of biofiltration removes the need for cleaning biofilters, a process that has to be carefully managed at Lochailort to avoid spikes in water quality.

More robust

"We have evolved out design from Lochailort and we think Inchmore's a better solution," said Richmond. "Inchmore should be more robust and easier to maintain, and hopefully even better water quality [than Lochailort]. We should have less management around the biofiltration."

Inchmore hatchery and RAS will produce six million smolts and six million parr, around about 800 tons of fish biomass per annum.

"Inchmore is to accompany and help advance expansion that we are undertaking in our seawater sites at the moment," explained Richmond. "We have had a few new sites come on line and there are more in the pipeline and Inchmore provides the fish to them. It is part of a general expansion within Marine Harvest operations over the next three or four years, which all ties in with the feed mill construction as well, at Kyleakin, which really needs a certain volume for it to be effective and efficient."