Rent debt sinks plans for land-based fish farm
Salmo Terra throws in the towel after court orders licence to be sold
A company planning a land-based salmonid farm in Norway has folded with a debt of NOK 32 million (£2.42m) after losing its permit to raise fish.
Bergen-based Salmo Terra was founded in 2017 and had permission to produce 8,000 tonnes of salmon and trout at Øygarden Business Park in Øygarden, an island municipality in Vestland. The original plan was to have fish in the first phase of the facility at the end of 2019.
This spring, Øygarden Business Park took Salmo Terra to Hordaland District Court over non-payment of NOK 4 million in rent. The court granted the landowner’s requested that Salmo Terra’s farming permit should be compulsorily sold, and the business park owner bought it.
Sitting on permit
Tor Anfinn Aasen, chairman and majority owner of the business park’s owner, Collaborare AS, said the company intends to sit on the permit until further notice.
We could not sit and wait any longer. We haven’t been paid for a long time.
Collaborare chair Tor Anfinn Aasen
Aasen said Salmo Terra’s tenancy had initially been a good, long-term contract that had now been broken.
“We could not sit and wait any longer. We haven’t been paid for a long time,” he told bt.no, website of news outlet Bergens Tidende.
Salmon Terra chief financial officer and co-founder Kai Andre Stæger-Holst told bt.no that with no licence and no money, the company had to file for bankruptcy.
He said it would take up to a year to find a new investor. “When you run out of money, and the creditors don’t get paid, you don’t have that time,” he said.
The company is now bankrupt, and around 100 small shareholders have lost their entire investment, reported bt.no.
