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A Norwegian start-up invests 150 million euros in Ostend to farm 3 million salmon annually in above-ground water tanks.
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If you think of salmon, you will quickly end up with a fillet from the Norwegian fjords or the coastal waters of Ireland and Canada. But from 2023 there will also be salmon in stores in Belgium, the Netherlands and France that is ‘made in Belgium’.
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The Norwegian start-up Columbi Salmon will farm 15,000 tons of salmon – around 3 million fish – every year in the port of Ostend. The fish will not swim in the sea, but in a few dozen water tanks. The largest are eight meters high, with a diameter of 20 meters. There will also be a slaughterhouse and an area where the salmon will be packed in boxes with ice and then leave for the customer.
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Feces
It is remarkable that the water with the fish excrement – an interesting fertilizer – serves to grow lettuce or other vegetables on the same site. The offal is then converted into biogas, which, together with solar energy, will provide about a third of the power required to keep the tank water at the right temperature, to purify it and to pump it. The nursery would eventually generate 80 to 100 jobs.
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The investment plans come from the brains of eight experts in the salmon sector. It is no coincidence that they all come from Norway, which is the largest salmon producer in the world with more than 1 million tons per year.
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CEO Anders Hagen and CFO Kolbjorn Giskeodegard are two former bankers who made a name for themselves at the Nordea stock exchange as fish company analysts. The operational director of Salmar – the second largest salmon company in Norway – is also on board, as is the family behind the fishing company Refsnes, which has existed for 100 years.
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IPO
The financing of the project is not yet complete, far from even. The investors – mainly the Refsnes family – have already put 30 million euros on the table. This should be further supplemented with bank loans and the income from an IPO in Oslo later this year. ‘We still have time. Construction will start within a year. We also don’t need all the money right away, ”says Giskeodegard.
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Boulogne-sur-Mer
Columbi Salmon had thought of several locations for its first location, including Boulogne-sur-Mer, but the Port of Ostend caught the French with a good file in speed. ‘We will have more than ten hectares available and with the canal we have easy access to water.’
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Zalmluis
The salmon sector has also discovered farming on land. “This will be part of the future,” it says. Indeed, the concept offers advantages over cage farming in the Norwegian fjords. ‘We are aiming for an equivalent production cost per kilo, but our fish will reach the consumer two days faster and therefore fresher thanks to local farming,’ he said.
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And there is more. The salmon louse has caused great havoc in Norway in recent years, with high mortality as a result. Treatment and prevention cost a lot of money. Another problem is that the salmon sometimes escape from the cages and mix with wild salmon with dire consequences for the species. ‘You don’t have any of these problems in closed systems’, it sounds.
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