My list of on-land fish farms is now at
85 different systems, comprising more than 10,000 actual, on-land fish farms
around the globe right now. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html.
But the CEO of Marine Harvest, Alf
Aarskog says that it just isn’t possible to farm fish on land. Well, my list says
he’s wrong and Kjell Bjordal, a former EWOS feed giant executive, says he is
too.
Bjordal has some good arguments. The
cost of a licence/concession is listed at NOK 65 million or $10.4 Million
Canadian. By comparison, we only charge $5,000 in BC, and at 130 licences, we
should be charging $1.352 Billion. Also by comparison, there is zero cost for a
licence on-land in Norway, so that’s a huge difference.
Then there is the difference that fish
are raised faster on land because you can control the photo-period of the day
and keep the water temperature the same, rather than seasonal fluctuations,
and, in addition to adding a current that results in higher concentration of
fish in the RAS system, fish are grown to market size in a little over half the
time of in-ocean farms.
Well run recirculating systems are low
on water consumption because it is reused, have no diseases, have no lice,
result in no wild salmonid deaths, no sea lions are shot, and the huge sewage
load is eliminated. Waste is used to produce energy, methane and aquaponics,
resulting in much cheaper electricity costs than claimed by detractors, and so
on.
Bjordal points out that the costs of
raising salmon in saltwater is rising at a steep rate of 55% from 2004 to 2014
driven by sanitary problems (a polite way of saying fish sewage, uneaten food, lice problems and diseases).
The cost of producing a kilo of salmon
in ocean will have risen from 28NOK/kg in 2014 to, by 2020, 38 NOK/kg. That’s
44 NOK in five years. In other words, on land salmon will be cost competitive
with in-ocean – even without the other factors. No one will buy in-ocean fish
once they understand the environmental degradation of in-ocean feed lots.
There is also the cost of equipment, in-ocean
at $10M NOK, but with the 75% subsidization for on-land systems in the EU, the
result is a net $17M NOK for capital. And there are even more cost savings to
be had.
Bjorsdal points out that the investment
for in-ocean for the same production is actually $75M NOK (65 + 10M = 75), so
on land is cheap cheap.
Other savings include yield per area,
for example, 4 square metres can produce a metric tonne of salmon on-land. That
means 1.2M metric tonnes can be produced on just 4.8 square kms of buildings.
By comparison, the BC industry puts out only 83,000 metric tonnes from its
in-ocean farms. BC could really use this on land and make more money and employ
more people.
But, Bjordal points out, there is still
another significant issue that is going to tip markets away from Norway’s
polluting in ocean fish: cost, insurance and freight cost to ship salmon to
market. The CIF in Oslo is 30NOK/kg; in Miami it is 45; Tokyo is 53.
What does this mean? It means that a big
company that puts a big plant in a big city on land can sew up the salmon
market for good. The margin in Tokyo is 23NOK/kg if the company can put product
on the market for the Oslo CIF of 30. That’s a lot of room to work with.
And what does that room mean? It means
that Norway cannot grow its fish and market unless it gets rid of the ‘sanitary’
issue, according to Bjordal. And, those costs are associated with in-ocean
fish farming. And that also means weakening its laws, which is contrary to the
public view of Norwegians, meaning: we are clean and wholesome, we have reduced
our oil industry dramatically, guess it’s time for fish farming.
That means that Norway has to reduce its
cost and lead in the on-land industry if it wants to continue as the world
leader in salmon, Bjorsdal said. And that includes being there with on-land
system to take control of the New York or Singapore, or Sao Paulo, or, etc.
market with food right in the city on land.
Right now, at the tipping point, it looks like
Aarskog and Marine Harvest are asleep at the switches.
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