Norwegian land-based salmon-farming company Andfjord Salmon has completed “Pool K1” at its facility in Kvalnes, Andøy, Norway, as the company continues to work on scaling up its operations.
In a release posted to the Oslo Børs, Andfjord Salmon said Pool K1, which it called the first newbuild pool of its ongoing expansion, is now complete and filled with seawater in anticipation of a future smolt release. The company said it plans to release roughly 750,000 smolts into the pool in early November as it continues to work toward its full capacity of 48,100 metric tons (MT) of head-on gutted (HOG) salmon.
The company also said it has released smolt successfully into its “Pool K0,” signaling the resumption of salmon farming at the facility. Andfjord put its production on hold during ongoing construction at the Kvalnes facility, which required building nearly 4.5 kilometers of tunnel infrastructure.
Andfjord released the smolt on 30 September and later, in an update in early October, said the results were successful and biological conditions were stable.
"We have been looking forward to this day for quite some time. Our team of fish-farming experts is excited about starting a new period of fish-farming operations and eager to once again demonstrate the biological benefits of our proprietary flow-through system,” Andfjord Salmon CEO Martin Rasmussen said in a release. "Today marks the beginning of a new chapter for Andfjord Salmon, with fish-farming operations once again taking center stage.”
Andfjord salmon’s last production cycle ended in June 2023, with the company harvesting 540 MT of HOG salmon. That harvest saw a 97.5 percent survival rate, with an average weight of 3.4 kilograms per fish.
Rasmussen said the reintroduction of smolt and the completion of Pool K1 has “gone better than we dared hope for.” The survival rate during the release was 99.97 percent, and Andfjord said the fish display “good external health.”
“The fish logistics system worked perfectly during the smolt release, and we hardly lost any fish,” he said. "The smolt has demonstrated a healthy appetite from day one and are growing faster than expected. This is a great start, but there is a lot of hard work to be done over the coming months before we can celebrate."
The company said in its H1 2025 update that design improvements over the course of its ongoing construction – which is just Phase 1 of the facility – will increase the facility’s capacity from 8,000 MT to 11,000 MT of salmon once that first stage is complete.
“The current and upcoming smolt releases represent the launch of a significant scale-up of salmon-farming activities at Kvalnes,” Rasmussen said.
