Atlantic Sapphire names new chief operating officer
On-land salmon farmer Atlantic Sapphire has named Jon-Birger Løvik as its new chief operating officer, it said in its monthly update today.
Løvik joined Atlantic Sapphire’s United States operation as director of aqua technology in April last year and has been in charge of farm operations at Homestead, Florida since August.
He has been involved directly and indirectly in Atlantic Sapphire since inception of the company in 2010 and was managing director of Atlantic Sapphire Denmark from June 2015 to December 2018.
He replaces his older brother, Atlantic Sapphire co-founder Bjørn-Vegard Løvik, who has been interim COO since March last year, when previous COO Dharma Rajeswaran was transferred to a new role of “chief of staff”.
Younger fish doing better
In a slide show accompanying today’s update, Atlantic Sapphire said more recently stocked salmon at its Florida farm continued to “perform great” and represented all net biomass gain in February.
As in January, there was no net growth from the initial batches in February due to higher day-to-day mortality and feed conversion ratio on mature fish. Initial batches were exposed to suboptimal conditions early in the cycle and have not performed as well as later batches.
The company harvested around 300 gutted weight tonnes in February and is planning a harvest volume of around 1,000 gwt in the first and second quarters of the year as it works towards steady state production of 10,000 gwt per year in Phase 1 of its farm.
Atlantic Sapphire has spent $42 million of the $225m required for Phase 2, which will take annual production capacity up to 25,000 gwt. Phase 2 is expected to be ready for fish early next year.
