At the 2026 SalmonChile Summit, which took place on 6 May in Frutillar, Chile, business leaders from several industries offered advice on how the South American nation’s salmon-farming sector can boost its public image.
Salmon sector observers have long stated one of the Chilean salmon industry’s main problems is that many people in Chile are unaware of the importance of the sector to the nation’s economy, despite the fact that the salmon sector provides jobs to more than 86,000 people, salmon is the country’s second-largest export product after mining, and salmon farming is a significant contributor to regional GDP.
In a 2024 survey held by polling agency Cadem, aquaculture came in last place of the general public’s view of relevant industries in Chile, chosen by just 5 percent of the public and coming in behind mining (chosen by 67 percent of those polled), agriculture (29 percent), energy (24 percent), services (22 percent), IT (14 percent), forestry (9 percent), banking (7 percent), and fishing (6 percent).
Over half of the public surveyed did not know that Chile is the second-largest producer of farmed salmon in the world and is responsible for 33 percent of the salmon produced globally, trailing just Norway, which produces 48 percent.
Roberta Valenca, who is Coca Cola’s former general manager for Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay, and is a current board member at Multi X, said at the summit that messaging around the excellence of the salmon-farming sector has yet to effectively reach everyday Chileans.
“Chilean salmon is a salmon of excellence and quality, but when you enter Chile … the average Chilean isn’t so clear about how to tell the story of salmon,” she said. “You don’t ask for pride. I want them to be proud of me, [but] pride is conquered, pride is earned.”
Besides building trust and awareness with the public, Teresita Morán, the regional director for Latin America at human resources software firm BUK, added that trust needs to be built within the industry itself on a companywide level.
“The first thing is to earn that trust, for them to trust you as a company, and [at BUK] we have been guided by seeking excellence in everything we do,” she said. “So, [this is about] trustworthiness, focusing on the long term, impact and talent, betting on people. I believe that today, any company’s greatest competitive advantage is its people, and seeing them not as a cost but as a competitive advantage. Believing that the team is the talent that will take us the farthest has been our great bet. [We have to] start at home in the end, because [the message] is the same as what we say outside our company. If we do not practice what we preach inside [the company], it is difficult to generate that credibility.”
According to Antonio Büchi, the CEO of Chilean telecommunications firm Entel, even with trust and better public awareness, there is also an external factor that needs to be taken into consideration: the government.
“An active, facilitating state is required,” Büchi said. “A state that gets rid of the red tape, of regulations, and, of course, respecting things, respecting the right to property, frees us up and releases energy. This is not a zero-sum game; this is a win-win game, and the state has to approach it like this, not from how [they can] extract more from companies but the other way around: how to make it easier for those companies to develop, grow, undertake, and innovate. To have industries that are a national pride, we need a state like this, not only that provides certainty but that is a facilitator for this positive-sum game.”
In that regard, the country’s salmon sector is optimistic that Chile’s new government, led by right-wing President José Antonio Kast, who took office on 11 March, may be a more approachable collaborator, as Kast has already reversed course on several actions and strategies taken by his predecessor, Gabriel Boric, regarding environmental controls, the fishing sector, and the salmon-farming industry.
He has specifically committed to collaborating with the sector in order to allow for the relocation of concessions to improve production – a plan that has been discussed for years but has had trouble getting off the ground – and he has also been critical of the controversial Lafkenche Law. Although the law was originally introduced to consider the territorial rights of Indigenous people in Chile and their ancestral use of marine resources, he has said it has been incorrectly used to hold up salmon-farming development.
With more than 1,000 attendees, the 2026 SalmonChile Summit focused on new proposals for the decentralized, innovative, and sustainable development of Chile’s southern regions, where salmon farming takes place. Besides Chile’s main aquaculture sector stakeholders, prominent national authorities at the event included President Kast, as well as Minister of Economy Daniel Maas and Minister of the Environment Francisca Toledo, who both participated in a panel discussion to discuss their respective ministries’ changes under the new government, such as new regulations and innovations that aim to provide more regulatory certainty for the sector.
