Gigante Salmon will stock first smolts next month
Gigante Salmon, which is developing a flow-through fish farm on a small island in northern Norway, will stock smolts in its first completed production basin in November, two months later than originally planned.
“Water will enter the plant in mid-October, and production will start when the plant has been sufficiently tested,” chief executive Helge E W Albertsen told one of Fish Farming Expert’s Norwegian sister sites, LandbasedAQ.
Gigante Salmon communications manager Linda Storholm said work is now under way to complete the final installations in the first basin, and work is also under way in the other two basins which will be completed during 2024.
The company recently raised £15 million in a share issue and £7.5m through a long-term leasing with a bank to meet rising costs.
Separate raceways
It is excavating the basins into the bedrock of Lille Indre Rosøy in Rødøy municipality in Helgeland. Basin 3, which is the first to be completed, contains three separate raceways.
“The work has been busy, and it has been demanding to stitch together various deliveries and executions in a location as ‘off-centre’ as Lille Indre Rødøy,” said Storholm. “But we feel that it has gone very well, and so far there have been no major challenges, despite slightly more unpredictable delivery times due to war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic.
“We entered into contracts with suppliers a long time ago and the critical and most important things have been delivered on time.”
Gigante Salmon has permission for 13,731 tonnes of standing biomass and plans to produce 16,000 gutted weight tonnes of fish annually.
