Christian Molinari

Christian Molinari

Contributing Editor reporting from Santiago, Chile

A native of San Francisco, Christian Molinari has lived and worked in Chile for over 20 years, after having arrived in Santiago as a volunteer and falling in love with the culture and its people. He covered business news in Latin America for over a decade, worked in communications at IBM Chile, and currently freelances in strategic communications and reporting.


Author Archive

Published on
July 7, 2025

An environmental court in Chile has annulled an environmental permit for salmon-farming firm Australis to operate its Obstrucción grow-out center in the Magallanes region, finding the permit’s evaluation process had deficiencies.

Through the permit, the firm sought to increase the center’s biomass production from 5,140 metric tons (MT) per cycle to 7,500 MT, thereby increasing aquaculture activity in waters near the

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Published on
July 7, 2025
Chilean salmon-farming firm Multi X has launched a new sustainability strategy called “the ABCs of Sustainability.” According to the firm, each letter represents a pillar of the strategy and groups together specific initiatives and metrics to be followed to achieve proper… Read More
Published on
July 3, 2025

The Chilean Salmon Council, a trade association formed in 2020 aimed at representing the interests of the country’s salmon-farming industry, is looking to leverage Chile’s agricultural strength to enhance ties with local aquaculture firms.

“Sixty percent of the feed that feeds our salmon comes from grains such as wheat, soybeans, canola, or rapeseed,” Salmon Council Executive Director Loreto Seguel said in a release.

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Published on
July 1, 2025

Peru’s first 2025 anchovy-fishing season in its North-Central region is “well on track,” according to IFFO – the Marine Ingredients Organization, which has predicted solid fishmeal and fish oil production for this year as a result.

In April, Peruvian authorities established a total allowable catch (TAC) of 3 million metric tons (MT) for the season, based on technical and biological reports submitted by the Peruvian Sea

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Published on
July 1, 2025

Salmon-farming firm Cooke Chile has taken a recent decision made by the Chilean environmental regulation supervisory authority, SMA, to the nation’s Supreme Court, ramping up the four-year feud between the two sides.

“The system needs to be reformed urgently!” Cooke Aquaculture Chile CEO Andrés Parodi said in a post on LinkedIn. “Companies that comply with the rules and have all the permits that the growing

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Published on
June 24, 2025

Chile’s senate has voted a new fishing quota bill into law.

With 38 votes in favor and one abstention, the senate approved the recommendations offered by a congressional joint committee formed to establish new fishing quotas between the industrial sector and artisanal fishers. The lower house of congress approved the bill one day before with 122 votes in favor, 15 against, and two abstentions.

The previous Chilean fishing law, enacted in

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Published on
June 23, 2025

A criminal court in Punta Arenas, Chile, has found former executives of salmon-farming firm Nova Austral guilty of environmental crimes but has acquitted them of fraud charges.

The court has unanimously ruled that defendants Drago Covacich, a former regional manager at Nova Austral, and Nicos Nicolaides, the former CEO of the firm, were guilty of the repeated crime of water pollution between December 2016 and June 2019. Further, the judges

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Published on
June 20, 2025

Puerto Montt, Chile-based salmon-farming firm Ventisqueros plans to increase efforts to decarbonize its operations, Ventisqueros Chief Commercial Officer Javier Calvo told SeafoodSource.

Calvo called 2024 “an especially significant year for Ventisqueros” in that it developed a fish-farming center that operates 100 percent on certified renewable energy. Ventisqueros’s E-Site, located in Tubildad on the island of Chiloé in

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Published on
June 13, 2025

Ecuador President Daniel Noboa announced at the beginning of June that his government would be eliminating a diesel subsidy for the tuna sector.

In a recent press conference, government spokeswoman Carolina Jaramillo said that Ecuadorian industrial tuna fishing companies should be able to assume the increased costs of eliminating the subsidy, pointing to 2024 tuna export totals by value of USD 1.6 billion (EUR 1.4 billion) and around 565,000

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Published on
June 11, 2025

Ecuador hit an all-time high for April exports of shrimp this year, sending 254 million pounds of shrimp abroad during the month,  up 3.1 percent compared to the 246 million pounds the country shipped in the same month of 2024.

The value of those exports hit USD 606 million (EUR 530 million), jumping 12.5 percent when compared to the USD 539 million (EUR 471 million) sent abroad in April 2024, according to figures from Ecuador’s

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