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 any rumors that may be in the public” about the project’s costs, emphasizing that “very little local taxpayer dollars have been spent on this project to date.”
Virginia District 3 Representative Tara Dye asked a Pure Salmon spokesman, who attended the meeting in person, whether the request for road funds would be the last funding request the company would make to the community.
The spokesman pointed out that the company had already spent nearly USD 80 million.
“So, [Pure Salmon] can do USD 80 million, but [it] can’t do the USD 423,000? That’s what the public is going to say,” Dye responded.
Ultimately, however, the board approved the cost of the 1,123-foot access road.
Pure Salmon runs land-based aquaculture operations in Japan, China, Poland, Italy, and France.
In 2020, it told SeafoodSource it hoped to build RAS facilities within short trucking distances of where the farmed fish might be sold, thus offering consumers a local option to replace imported fish. This would mean consumers getting fresher fish while reducing carbon emissions caused by transportation, which often occur via air freight for species like salmon.
The company announced the Virginia project in 2020 and broke ground on it in 2021 but encountered poor soil conditions in 2023 which required a site relocation. At the 7 April meeting, Ghannam said that the project is currently slated for completion in late 2028 or early 2029.
