Bodø, Norway-based land-based salmon-farming company Gigante Salmon is “ramping up” production at its farm in Rødøy, Norway.
The company announced it plans to release roughly 2.2 million smolts into its facility while it also begins to enter the final phase of expansion toward full capacity. Gigante Salmon is building a land-based salmon farm with a projected production capacity of up to 16,000 metric tons (MT) of head-on gutted (HOG) salmon annually.
The company said it received the first of “several” smolt deliveries from Grytåga Settefisk and will continue to stock in the fall until it reaches 2.2 million smolts total.
“We are very pleased to be able to put a larger part of the facility into use, and we see that the smolt is of high quality,” Gigante Salmon CEO Kjell Lorentsen said in a release.
Construction at Gigante Salmon’s facility began in 2021, and at the time, the company had permissions to produce up to 13,731 MT of fish. Since that time, it has received additional permissions and is now aiming for the 16,000 MT figure.
The company first began stocking salmon in January 2024, and Gigante Salmon announced in Q2 2025 that it had a successful first harvest of 694 MT of salmon, achieving a 91 percent superior grade and an average round weight of 3.83 kilograms.
The fish cost NOK 70 (USD 7.07, EUR 5.98) per kilogram in production costs, and Lorentsen said those results are providing a solid basis for further operations.
“With a good farming facility and skilled employees, everything is in place for good production,” he said.
