Martin Rasmussen: Realising sustainable fish farming

25 April 2023

2022 marked the start of fish farming operations for Andfjord Salmon, after having spent the past couple of years developing our first land-based pool. This meant that we could finally start to properly document and prove why we have set an ambition of developing the most fish friendly and sustainable salmon farming facility of its kind.

When Roy Pettersen founded Andfjord Salmon, it was based on an idea of capitalising on the natural advantages of being located at Andøya in Northern Norway, and utilising them to recreate the salmon’s natural habitat on land. With love and respect for the local environment we are part of, including the wild salmon that swim in the ocean and the rivers in our region, Pettersen and Andfjord Salmon wanted to develop a fish farming facility with the smallest possible environmental footprint and without a negative impact on the marine environment. Sustainability has therefore been fully integrated with Andfjord Salmon’s business strategy from day one.

And it still is today. 

However, talking is one thing. Walking the talk is another. 

Read more: Andfjord Salmon ESG report 2022

In 2022, we have finally been able to do the latter. Please don’t get me wrong. Everything we have done up until June 2022, has been executed as planned – with our sustainability ambition in mind. Such as the development of our flow through fish farming concept, the verification of the laminar water flow and proving that all pool functions work as they should. Because we knew that they would be key to unlocking a number of sustainability and fish health benefits. In theory. 

From theory to practice

The key to proving our theory worked in practice was to have fish in the pool. On 25 June 2022, we released close to 200,000 smolt in our first pool at Andøya. This has enabled us to actually prove that we can produce salmon with significantly low energy consumption.

It has allowed us to showcase that salmon thrive in our flow-through system, as proven by a higher than-expected growth rate and highly impressive survival levels. It has given us the opportunity to show that our fish is healthy and tastes excellent. And we have achieved this without negatively affecting the marine environment.

As you probably understand, sustainability and corporate development and performance in Andfjord Salmon go hand-in-hand. Our annual sustainability report shows how we are realising our sustainable fish farming vision defined even before our founding. It also shows the many steps we take every day to make our operations even more sustainable and responsible. 

We have identified five main sustainability topics that we believe are central to managing the most important social and environmental challenges that Andfjord Salmon faces: Environment and climate impact, occupational health and safety, supply chain transparency and control, local value creation, and working environment. You can read more about these topics in this report, which has been drawn up in accordance with the 2021 Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standard. 

Although we have taken massive strides forward in 2022, we are still at the beginning of Andfjord Salmon’s adventure. We look forward to continuing to document this journey. I hope you can take some time to dive into the details of our sustainability efforts in 2022 and will continue to follow us for more updates in the future.

Martin Rasmussen
CEO of Andfjord Salmon