Grieg Seafood Newfoundland harvests first salmon out of Placentia Bay farm

Grieg Seafood has successfully harvested the first generation of Atlantic salmon stocked in its Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada-based aquaculture operation.

The company announced it harvested its first generation of fish in late October, before packing the fish at Quinlan Brothers’ processing plant in Bay de Verde, and transporting them to the North American market. The company said fish from its Red Island farm are currently being harvested after spending a year in Grieg Seafood’s freshwater and smolt facility in Marystown, Newfoundland before being transferred to ocean farms in Placentia Bay in 2022. 

The first generation of fish, Grieg Seafood Newfoundland said, grew well throughout the year and had no need for treatment of any form, with a survival rate of 92 percent and no sea lice issues.

“Since 2014, we have been working towards this day, when we are finally able to send salmon grown in Placentia Bay to our customers and consumers,” Grieg Seafood Newfoundland Managing Director Knut Skeidsvoll said in a release. “I am pleased with the biological performance of the first generation, including the survival rate as well as strong sea lice control.”

The company said it is planning to harvest 5,000 metric tons of salmon from its Newfoundland facilities in 2023.

“Harvesting the first generation of fish in Newfoundland marks an important milestone for Grieg Seafood. I am pleased to see that the fish has good welfare and that biological control has been strong,” Grieg Seafood ASA CEO Andreas Kvame said in a release.

Grieg Seafood Newfoundland has been developing salmon farming in Placentia Bay since 2014, and the company got environmental approval from the province’s government for salmon farming in the region in 2018. At the time, the company was called Grieg Newfoundland, and was a subsidiary of Grieg Group and Newfoundland, Canada-based Ocean Choice International. Then, in 2020, Grieg Seafood acquired Grieg Newfoundland through a share purchase agreement, forming Grieg Seafood Newfoundland. At the time, the company predicted it would harvest its first salmon from Placentia Bay in 2022-2023 – a timeline it managed to meet.

Soon after the share purchase agreement, Grieg Seafood nabbed five more farming permits in Placentia Bay, but later that year paused construction on its Newfoundland project in light of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The motivation to establish salmon farming in Placentia Bay, Kvame said after Grieg Seafood ASA acquired Grieg Newfoundland in 2020, was the nearby market – a sentiment he echoed in response to the area’s first harvest last week.

“This first, successful generation shows what enormous potential Placentia Bay in Newfoundland holds for sustainable salmon farming. This is especially true in light of the booming North American market just next door, where consumers are increasingly asking for local, healthy, and climate-friendly food,” he said. “We will continue to develop our production in Newfoundland gradually and responsibly during the years to come.”

The company recently resumed construction of a post-smolt recirculating aquaculture system facility in the region and said it expects to complete construction by spring 2024, at a cost of CAD 14 million (USD 10 million, EUR 9.5 million). The company already has a feed building and a smolt building on the site, and Grieg Seafood has globally invested in land-based post-smolt facilities across its salmon-farming operations, allowing it to complete a large part of the production cycle on land to minimize the amount of time its fish spend in marine farms.

Skeidsvoll said the company will continue to focus on the Placentia Bay facility and its Newfoundland operations.

“We will keep developing our Newfoundland region step by step, and create jobs and value for the communities where we operate for years to come,” he said.  

Photo courtesy of Grieg Seafood Newfoundland