Coho salmon is becoming a more popular option for Chile’s salmon-farming industry.
Because of a mucus coho naturally has on its skin, as well as stronger, tighter scales, it is typically immune to sea lice and the infectious salmon anemia (ISA) virus. Coho can also be harvested before Chile's summer, when the risk of algae blooms increases due to higher water temperatures. Chile’s salmon-farming industry has also pledged to reduce its overall use of antibiotics, and has done so in part through by limiting the time its fish is in its sea-based net-pen farms. Coho requires less time at sea, which is the period in the production cycle when the fish are most susceptible to disease.
Several companies in Chile are starting to capitalize on the benefits. While Atlantic salmon remains the primary species being farmed by most of Chile’s largest aquaculture firms, many are shifting some of their production over to coho. In 2019, Las Condes, Chile-based Blumar acquired coho specialist Salmones Ice Val for USD 51 million (EUR 46.1 million), adding five coho concessions and three processing plants to boost production of coho salmon by 7,000 metric tons (MT) a year. And Puerto Montt, Chile-based Salmones Camanchaca has shifted more of its production coho salmon in order to reduce its stock’s exposure to diseases including salmonid rickettsial septicaemia (SRS).
Salmones Aysén is the exception in Chile – a large salmon-farming firm fully committed to coho salmon. It ranks only behind AquaChile in its total production of coho, at around 45,000 MT whole-fish equivalent (WFE) annually.
Founded in 2006, Salmones Aysén began with two farming sites, producing 3,000 MT of coho annually. It now operates 10 sea-water farming sites, three fresh-water farming sites, and processing plants in Puerto Montt and Chiloé, according to Salmones Aysén Board Member Pablo Barahona, the eponymously named son of the company’s founder.
The company is named after the southern Chilean region of Aysén where the company started, but is based in Santiago. While most Atlantic salmon farmers have shifted some operations further south to colder waters where sea lice is less prevalent, Salmones Aysén has moved most of its operations to the Los Lagos Region, closer to Chile’s populations centers and the country’s major transportation infrastructure.
“It’s more efficient,” Barahona said during a trade mission visit from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.-based retailer Giant Eagle, in which SeafoodSource participated.
In 2022, the company had sales of around USD 250 million (EUR 226 million), and the goal this year is to reach USD 300 million (EUR 271 million), he said.
Salmones Aysén’s coho are largely antibiotic-free, and the company only uses the medication as a last recourse to respond to disease. Following its strategy implemented in 2014 to reduce antibiotic use, the company uses high-quality aquafeed from Cargill and Skretting, with natural additives to prevent illness. The company also vaccinates its fish four to five times over their lifespan, and employs a team of five veterinarians who regularly inspect all its fish with the goal of ensuring the smolts are as healthy as possible, especially when they’re transferred to the more-dangerous conditions of the salt-water pens.
While Barahona said he takes pride in Salmones Aysén’s unique position in the marketplace, he acknowledged focusing exclusively on coho has come at a cost.
“We have to be very entrepreneurial in coho research and development because all industry R&D in Chile is done for Atlantic salmon. Some of the investigation done for Atlantic salmon can also be applied to coho, but there’s a lot that doesn’t,” Barahona said.
Salmones Aysén is working closely with providers such as the previously named Cargill and Skretting to develop coho-specific feed and feeding systems, as well as the aquaculture technology firm CageEye to develop coho-specific remote systems for feeding, preventing disease, and reviewing how the biomass is performing in the cage.
“We have worked with them for five years to have the correct algorithm for our fish automatically fed and to prevent disease. We are also working with another company to do our own genetics to have stronger fish that grow faster and are less likely to have disease,” he said.
Most of Salmones Aysén’s production is destined for Japan, where consumers seek out coho’s more intense red color and its milder flavor than Atlantic salmon, Barahona said.
“In Japan, coho was an unknown product as it is in the U.S., and sockeye was very popular. They imported it from Alaska and from Russia. But demand increased in the U.S., making the product expensive, and supply was unstable. Coho started to gain ground, and now, it’s the most-consumed salmonid in Japan today. It’s the main protein, and it increased during the pandemic,” Barahona said.
Salmones Aysén produces sashimi-quality coho, which means it can be eaten raw. Reaching that quality requires an enhanced biosecurity process, where the fish undergoes processing and freezing within eight hours of harvest, Barahona said.
“With frozen salmon, you get a 100-percent guarantee that these products can be safely consumed and the quality is preserved,” he said.
The company is making an effort to better position frozen salmon in the U.S. through its “fresh frozen” concept. The U.S. is the top buyer of Chilean salmon overall, but the market currently prefers fresh salmon that has to be sent by plane. Barahona said there’s both a quality and a sustainability case to be made for frozen salmon.
“With other fresh fish from Chile, it arrives at the supermarket in 72 hours after harvest in a best-case scenario – that’s not very fresh, and it can stay in the supermarket for five to six days, where the cold chain is hard to guarantee,” Barahona said. “It’s also one-twentieth the carbon emissions when shipped by boat as opposed to air-freight, which makes it more sustainable, and can be frozen with technology that has no emissions.”
About 50 percent of Salmones Aysén’s freezing capacity uses emission-free technology, and the company is looking to increase that to 100 percent in the coming years, Barahona said.
Photo courtesy of Salmones Aysén
