The Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries has released its 2024 profitability survey for the nation's salmon- and rainbow trout-farming sector.
The survey showed that companies which produce salmon and rainbow trout, including hatcheries, saw a reduction in profitability between 2023 and 2024.
According to the report, companies in Norway's salmon and rainbow trout supply chain achieved a total ordinary profit before taxes of NOK 14.3 billion (USD 1.4 billion, EUR 1.2 billion). It noted that this total in 2023 was NOK 21.2 billion (USD 2.1 billion, EUR 1.8 billion) and that the difference represented a 32 percent decline.
The directorate said the results were hard to effectively compare to previous years, however, since the nation's resource rent tax, implemented in 2023, had prompted many companies to restructure during the period studied.
Though that tax was initially proposed at 40 percent, Norwegian politicians from opposing political parties ultimately came together to lower it to 25 percent after its announcement spurred cost-cutting measures, including layoffs, in the salmon industry.
Not all businesses have suffered dips with the tax in place, however, as the directorate also suggested hatchery production operations had benefited somewhat from the tax, evidenced by the fact that these businesses had a larger share of total ordinary profit in 2024 than they did in 2023.
Taxes on the Norwegian salmon and trout industry make up a key source of the nation's Aquaculture Fund, which recently announced that it would pay communities that host aquaculture operations NOK 1.4 billion (USD 138 million, EUR 120 million) this year.
Besides the tax, the directorate ascribed the profit drop to reduced prices per kilogram of salmon in 2024 and high costs in general during the period. The total average cost per kilogram of fish produced in the salmon and rainbow trout sector in 2024, the directorate said, was NOK 64.60 (USD 6.50, EUR 5.50).
