Wellboat entrepreneur shortlisted for Aquaculture Award

Roger Halsebakk, founder of the world’s largest wellboat company, Sølvtrans, is among individuals shortlisted for this year’s Aquaculture Awards, which will be presented in Inverness in June.

Halsebakk, whose company operates 35 vessels in five salmon farming countries, is one of three individuals in final of the Outstanding Contribution category. The others are Scottish Sea Farms’ head of veterinary services Ronnie Soutar, and Crown Estate Scotland’s aquaculture operations manager Alex Adrian.

While most of the finalists are from the UK, all three companies shortlisted in the Innovation category are based overseas.

Marine Donut

Norwegian company Bluegreen Fusion AS has reached the final for its work in creating the Marine Donut, a floating, torus-shaped closed salmon farm that is said to be the world’s largest construction in thermoplastic. The Donut project was originally due to be carried out with Mowi but is now being delivered in conjunction with Scottish Sea Farms co-owner SalMar.

Bluegreen is up against Switzerland-based DSM Nutritional Products, which has been shortlisted for its Digital SalmoFan, a hand-held device for accurately assessing salmon fillet pigmentation.

The third finalist in the category is Australian company Aqua Clean Tas Pty Ltd, which has developed the Tassie Devil net cleaner, claimed to be more reliable and greener than all other systems on the market.

The awards will be presented on June 15 at an event at the Macdonald Drumossie hotel, Inverness.

See the full list of awards finalists here.