Gigante opens the floodgates

Land-based fish farmer Gigante Salmon has filled the first of three pools at its facility with sea water, it said in a market announcement today.

Functional testing of production equipment is ongoing, with the target of stocking smolts as soon as the test period has been completed.

“The initial test run is positive, everything is working as planned and we have not encountered any unforeseen challenges,” said chief executive Helge E W Albertsen.

Nursery unit

The facility, which is under construction on the island of Lille Indre Rosøy in Rødøy municipality in northern Norway, will start production in unit no.3, a nursery basin, where smolts will be grown from around 100 grams to 1kg.

The two remaining production units will be completed during 2024, in time to be stocked with the 1kg post-smolts. All three pools have or are being excavated into the bedrock. The completed pool has been lined with concrete and a membrane, and divided into looped raceways.

Gigante Salmon, which is using a flow-through system, expects to harvest 5,300 gutted weight tonnes of salmon in early 2025 and have a second harvest of the same size a year later from a second batch of smolts.

It plans full production from the second half of 2025, when it will stock 3.3 million smolts for a harvest of 16,000 gwt in late 2026/early 2027.