The fourth quarter of 2024 concluded a challenging year for Frøya, Norway-headquartered salmon-farming company SalMar, but according to CEO Frode Arntsen, the firm achieved biological and financial improvements in the period’s closing weeks, presenting a brighter outlook for the opening quarter of 2025.
Delivering the company’s Q4 report, Arntsen said 2024 featured harvest volumes and financial results that were negatively impacted by environmental challenges, including jellyfish and sea lice.
“SalMar’s focus is always forward,” he said. “We must continue and strengthen the work that SalMar has done since 1991 – ensuring good interaction with the environment that we operate in to optimize in relation to fish, people, and values.”
Despite the challenges, 2024 gave SalMar some valuable lessons and knowledge that the company will use this year, Arntsen said.
“The setup, built over time at SalMar, has been very important. Our belief in large, local harvesting and processing capacity near where we farm has been crucial. At the same time, we see that the foundation and philosophy of our operations remain just as relevant and strong – the right location, the right smolt, the right technology, the right feed, and the right handling by people who always want to do a little more and [who] care. This is the core and guiding principle at SalMar every single day,” he said. “Although we have not found absolute solutions to our challenges, it strengthens our belief in the way forward and the volume potential we have in our value chain.”
In Q4 2024, SalMar harvested 73,800 metric tons (MT) of salmon – almost 10,000 MT less than in the corresponding period of 2023. This contributed to a full-year 2024 total of 231,800 MT, which was 22,300 MT short of 2023’s record harvest.
Its Q4 operating revenues totaled NOK 7.88 billion (USD 707.6 million, EUR 676.3 million) – down from over NOK 8 billion (USD 718.4 million, EUR 686.6 million) in Q4 2023, while its operational EBIT amounted to NOK 1.49 billion (USD 133.8 million, EUR 127.9 million), compared with NOK 2.19 billion (USD 196.7 million, EUR 188 million) previously.
Broken down by harvest area, SalMar Aker Ocean, of which SalMar owns 85 percent, harvested no fish in Q4 2024. Its latest production cycles for both its Arctic Offshore Farming and Ocean Farm 1 operations are now underway, with planned harvesting in the first and second quarters of 2025...
