Amid rising construction costs, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.-headquartered aquaculture firm Pure Salmon has announced that its fish farm in the U.S. state of Virginia will produce steelhead trout, not the costlier Atlantic salmon it initially planned.
Pure Salmon executives attended a 7 April meeting of the Russell County Board of Supervisors in Lebanon, Virginia, to discuss the pivot.
Karim Ghannam, co-founder and chief investment officer of Singapore-based investment firm 8F Management, which owns a controlling stake in Pure Salmon, attended the meeting on Zoom and explained that “inflation on construction pricing in the U.S.” had motivated the shift to steelhead.
Local independent news outlet The Cardinal News speculated that the switch was also due to U.S. consumers’ fears of inflation, which could make a less costly fish more appealing.
Virginia House of Delegates member Will Morefield, a long-time supporter of the project, attended the meeting to back the company’s request that the community build a USD 423,000 (EUR 370,834) access road to the farm site, which would allow Pure Salmon to bring in the 20 miles of underground piping that the project requires.
Morefield said that Pure Salmon and 8F had invested “nearly USD 80 million [EUR 70 million] of private equity on this project.”
He wanted to, he said, “dispel ...
