7,500-tonne UK salmon RAS 'will be shovel ready within a year'

The company planning a 7,500-tonne land-based salmon farm in Grimsby, England, expects to be in a position to break ground on the £245 million project in the first half of next year, one of its directors has revealed.

Mike Berthet delivered an update on Aquacultured Seafood Limited’s plans for a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) facility during a presentation at Aquaculture UK in Glasgow yesterday. It would be the UK's first commercial-scale RAS facility.

“We are now at the cusp of raising a small amount of capital to get our internal plans laid out, our technical plans for the farm itself, and obviously the plans for the ‘box’, 44,000 square metres that will sit over it,” Berthet said in a 15-minute talk on the trade show’s Keynote Stage.

£245 million

He said the total cost of the project “will stand at about £245 million”.

“A large proportion of that is the build, but there is also two years’ worth of working capital whilst you grow healthy, nutritious salmon, and also a £20 million contingency plan.

“We’re in the final stages of raising the £3.5 million to do the detailed plans. That’ll take us about six months and then we will raise the major finance through banks and equity and hope to be shovel ready in Q1, Q2 next year.”

Berthet, one of the prime movers in the project, explained that the company had originally planned to produce 5,000 tonnes annually, but that its technology provider had redesigned the tank configuration to produce a larger volume on the same building footprint.

“They are very confident that 7,500 tonnes of whole round is possible, which will give us about 6,000 tonnes HOG (head-on gutted). You have to stick with the footprint that you've gone for planning for, otherwise you've got to go for planning again and we don’t have another 18 months.”

Decided on RAS supplier

In its planning application, Aquacultured Seafood named Israel-based AquaMaof as its tech provider, but it’s not clear if that’s still the case.

Asked if the company had decided who would build the RAS, Berthet confirmed that it had.

“We're pretty much decided. I can't say who it is without their permission, but we're pretty much decided.”

Spreading out sales

Berthet, whose career has included a job as purchasing director for a 4,000 tonne salmon processing firm in Grimsby, said the major processors he had met with in the town had each offered to take the RAS facility’s full production, but Aquacultured Seafood – which plans a further two salmon RAS facilities – prefers to supply a proportion of its harvest volume to them all.

“Our intention is to take everybody with us on this journey,” he said. “This is phase one of Aquacultured’s plan. We already have a second site down in South Wales and we’re looking at the third site in Grimsby, and it’s very important to me that we take everybody on the journey.”

Supportive council

He had high praise for the local council, which has faced three judicial reviews forced by anti-salmon farming activists after the authority granted planning permission for the RAS facility.

“We're very, very grateful for the support that we had from the council that had to spend an enormous amount of local money that should have gone on schools, hospital services, local services, etc., in order to fight what turned out to be a non-entity over a period of 18 months,” said Berthet.

He was less complimentary about the UK government.

“You would have thought that the government would have helped bring approximately 200 construction jobs to Grimsby, and 70 full-time equivalent employment opportunities. And I think if we had been a car manufacturer, they would have tripped over themselves to help us,” said Berthet, who added that when the company met with government to ask for support and help “we were turned away, we just had to get on with it”.

May achieve premium price

Asked whether the company’s plan was predicated on receiving a premium price for its fish, he replied: “Our business model is based on market price, based on things like Fish Pool, etc., and taken forward to when we expect to take the first salmon out of the water.

“But the more I discuss it with retailers, food service, and with some of the processors, the prospect of having a very, very low carbon footprint, of having no microplastics, of having no escapees, having no chemicals or sea lice problems, etc., I think we will end up with a premium.”

Also read:

Grimsby land-based salmon farm gets green light again

UK’s first large-scale salmon RAS gets the go-ahead