Scotland salmon farmer netted £11.7m from sale of unwanted sites
Scottish Sea Farms (SSF) made £11.7 million from selling five unwanted sites to fellow salmon farmer Loch Duart last year, newly published 2022 accounts for its Shetland subsidiary show.
The marine sites, off the coast of Skye, were part of the package SSF acquired when it bought Grieg Seafood Hjaltland for £164m in December in 2021. SSF bought Grieg for its Shetland sites, and never farmed the Skye sites.
The five Skye sites have a combined maximum allowed biomass of 9,694 tonnes and could enable Loch Duart to substantially increase its annual production of around 6,000 gutted weight tonnes.
Loch Duart, which farms in Sutherland and the Outer Hebrides, is owned by a fund managed by Vision Ridge Partners, a sustainability-focused investment firm based in Colorado and New York. Loch Duart has said it intends to develop the sites over time, and in line with its low-density farming approach.
Licence assets
SSF Shetland Ltd’s 2022 annual report states that the company recorded the exceptional sale of site licence assets “realising a gain of sale of £11.7 million with intangible assets having a nil book value at the balance sheet date”.
Grieg Seafood Shetland had previously given up farming the sites because of biological problems and the farms’ distance from Shetland, where Grieg had the rest of its farms and its processing facility.
Although SSF reports how much it made on the sale of the sites, it doesn’t say what the sale price was. This may be higher than £11.7m if SSF incurred costs as part of the sale.
Higher turnover
SSF Shetland had turnover of £93.7m in the year ended December 31, 2022, which was an increase of 15% compared to 2021.
Operating profit was £23.1m, compared to a £9.85m loss the year before. Operating profit included the £11.7m made on the sale of the Skye farms to Loch Duart.
The 2022 annual report for SSF Shetland’s parent company, Scottish Sea Farms Ltd – owned 50-50 by Norwegian salmon farming heavyweights SalMar and Lerøy - has not yet been published.
