Nordic Aqua Partners redomiciles in Norway, reports China salmon RAS project on time and on budget

Nordic Aqua Partners, the company planning a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) salmon farm in Ningbo, China, announced that its project is on schedule and in line with budget.

The company, in its Q2 2023 results report, said that stage one of the company’s planned RAS facility, which will have an annual production capacity of 4,000 metric tons (MT), is on track to be completed by Q1 2024. The company added that the biological performance of all of its batches of salmon – which originate from the first inlay of Atlantic salmon eggs in March 2022 – has been “very good.”

The company also added that the installation of RAS 6 was completed, and fish were transferred to the new RAS in August 2023. Construction of RAS 7 to 9, it added, is in process as planned. 

“The second quarter of 2023 was another eventful quarter for Nordic Aqua. Overall, the production went according to plan, and we continued the important work of increasing management capacity and expertise as we continue to grow,” Nordic Aqua Partners CEO Ragnar Joensen said in a release.

Stage 1 of the company’s operations in China, the company said, is fully financed, and stage 2, which will add another 4,000 MT, is also fully financed when cash from operations in 2024 and 2025 is included.

The company also completed a merger transforming the company into a Norwegian LLC, effectively redomiciling it from Denmark to Norway. The purpose of the merger, the company said, was intended to “make shares more attractive to investors, and thus contribute to improving the company’s access to capital,” it said in a release.

As the company continues in its status as a RAS startup, it continued to post low operating income and high expenses. The company had another operating income of DKK 622,000 (USD 90,000 EUR 83,000), an increase from the DKK 136,000 (USD 19,000, EUR 18,000) it posted in Q2 2022. Its losses for the period before taxes reached DKK 23.8 million (USD 3.4 million, EUR 3.3 million), up from the DKK 3 million (USD 437,000, EUR 402,000) in losses it posted in Q2 2022. 

For the first half of 2023, the company lost DKK 34.8 million (USD 5 million, EUR 4.6 million). Available cash, it added, is DKK 256 million (USD 37 million, EUR 34 million). 

Looking forward, the company said that its performance is in line with the timelines and budgets it expected, the installation of equipment in its RAS facility is “according to plan,” and it is having good biological performance. 

“The overall status at the end of the second quarter is that the Nordic Aqua team with strong support from local authorities and in collaboration with leading industrial partners is positioned for the first harvest at the end of the first quarter of 2024,” Joensen said. 

Photo courtesy of Nordic Aqua Partners