Poul Andrias Jacobsen is the marketing manager for Glyvrar, Faroe Islands-based Bakkafrost, which produced 90,600 metric tons of farmed salmon in 2022 and had revenue of USD 1 billion (EUR 900 million) in the year, ranking it in the top 10 of farmed salmon producers in the world. It expanded into Scotland in 2019 after purchasing a majority stake in the Scottish Salmon Company.
Jacobsen sat down with SeafoodSource to discuss the Faroese origins and current day community-building, its value chain, and its goals for the near future.
SeafoodSource: Bakkafrost is one of the biggest salmon companies in the world yet from one of the smallest countries in the world. You are also publicly traded, but you're not making waves every day. Where do you see yourselves in the larger marketplace in the seafood industry? How do you want to be perceived as a company?
Jacobsen: We like to portray ourselves as a professional company that is producing superior-quality salmon. That's our main goal, and we have tried to do that for many markets. So, we are present in Asia, Europe, and in North America and are selling to about 50 different countries around the world. We do things in our own way. We have a value chain that is the longest vertically integrated value chain in the industry. That’s very important for us because that's the only way we can control the quality of the end product.
SeafoodSource: What is unique about Bakkafrost’s value chain?
Jacobsen: We produce our own fishmeal and fish oil, which we include in our special recipe of feed from mostly local fish – roughly 80 percent. The fish that we get is all locally caught around the Faroe Islands. However, we need some other ingredients as well, and we get that from abroad.
It’s very important for us that the feed has a high inclusion of marine ingredients because we think fish should eat fish. Additionally, our fish comes alive to the factory and swims directly into our factory to create as little stress for them as possible. When it comes to treatments – the industry is battling with sea lice – we try to do as good a job as possible with natural treatments. We use freshwater mainly, but we also have loop water treatments.
We do not use any antibiotics, and we haven't done that in the Faroes for 20 years, which we’ve found is especially important for U.S. customers. So, we try to do it in our own way and try to do as much in-house as possible so that we are not dependent on somebody else for maintaining the standards we rely on to sell our fish.
SeafoodSource: How closely does Bakkafrost affiliate itself with the Faroe Islands? What role do you feel the company plays within the country?
Jacobsen: We are the biggest private employer in the Faroes, with about 1,100 people on staff. We [comprise] about 50 percent of the nation's total exports ... so we are quite a big player when it comes to the national economy.
Bakkafrost is important for the overall Faroese community. We are in all the local communities; there’s only one municipality in the Faroes where we don't have any employees, so we are everywhere. We sponsor local sports teams, including the national football team, and cultural events, so you see us everywhere.
SeafoodSource: You have a very Faroese identity, which is different than all the other big salmon companies. Moving into Scotland, how does that change your identity? How do you bring your values and your system to a new place?
Jacobsen: It takes time to adjust to owning a new company, but so far, it is going very well in regards to integrating our values. It's not something you just put on them. [The Scottish team] see a company in the farming industry that has done well for many years, and they can find value in some of the things that we are doing; however, it's not a one-way road, as we can also learn a lot from the Scottish team.
That builds up the values of the company over time. Scotland has a reputation of producing good-quality fish. Now, we are we are doing a lot of expansion and modernizing the value chain in Scotland.
It is important to get the values that are part of not just the Faroes but Bakkafrost values in general because we have some special values as a company and we want to get that integrated into the Scottish part of the company ... as well as the Danish and the U.S. parts of the company.
SeafoodSource: It seems like Bakkafrost is very deliberate in its decision-making. Is that true?
Jacobsen: I think so. I'm not the one who makes those decisions, but it seems like everything is made using reason at Bakkafrost. We focus on quality. If something can enhance our overall quality or the value chain, that's what it seems like our top management is looking at. We are not going to be picking things up left and right. We’re going to pursue increasing our overall value additions for the company without sacrificing quality.
Here in the Faroes, we have reached the limit of how many licenses we can have. We are still developing processes to produce even bigger volumes, but it's difficult when you have a limited number of licenses. We can increase or shorten the time in the in the sea so we can increase total volume.
[That's why] expanding to Scotland was a natural move because Scotland is quite similar to the Faroes. It is quite close and many of the conditions are the same, but we are always focusing on the overall Bakkafrost quality – no matter whether it's from the Faroes or from Scotland. So, yes, it was a good and well-thought-out decision.
SeafoodSource: What are your goals going forward from a marketing perspective?
Jacobsen: We want to be perceived as a professional and stable company with long-lasting connections that delivers [high-quality] fish to our customers consistently. We know that our salmon is more expensive than others because the quality is top notch. We are trying to position ourselves as a high-quality brand, and that also means not everybody can buy Bakkafrost salmon.
However, we have big volumes, and because the segment for high-quality products is limited, we also need to get some fish out to the mainstream retail markets; therefore, it's a bit weighing of things. When we also look at business to business, we want to be known as a stable company, where customers know what they get. We know some companies are in with big volumes some weeks and then they're out for a longer period. We want to build long-term relationships and serve customers every week so they know they can get our fish and not need to choose something else because we're not there.
We are also getting our products into very high-level restaurants, and a lot of good chefs are using our products. We get a lot of feedback from end consumers that our products are amazing, and that's the main goal, but we also want to be a professional partner for our customers; that's very important for us.
We have long-term connections with our partners around the world, and we like to be dedicated to our customers; therefore, we don't want to have a lot of customers in each area, so we choose a few very important partners we collaborate with. We also do a lot of marketing with local companies because they know the local conditions better than we do. It's very important for us that our salmon is tasty, that it’s a healthy product, that it’s a safe product, and that it's convenient.
Sustainability is also key. We are fortunate to have the natural resources we have here in the Faroes. We can use the fjords, but it's very important for us that we leave them in the same conditions as we received them. We also need to look at packaging issues in that we use correct materials that can be recycled.
One of the things we have done lately is construct the first biogas plants in the Faroes, using our waste in a good way to make energy and heating and reusing that fertilizer as a product. We were also the first company that made a 100 percent electric workboat ... and our new vessel is a hybrid vessel, allowing us to even change the motors of the ship if something comes up in the future which is more sustainable.
SeafoodSource: Value-added production is something Bakkafrost is paying a lot of attention to. Can you describe more of your efforts there and where you hope to go in coming years?
Jacobsen: Value-added products are getting more and more important. That trend picked up during the corona[virus] pandemic because much of the foodservice establishment was closed, so people switched to cooking at home instead. Responding to that, we pivoted together with the market and began to do more and more with our own brands.
Historically, we have produced more private-label products, but we are shifting toward our own brands. Bakkafrost is very well known in business-to-business markets but has not been very well known in the consumer market. So, for our Faroese salmon, we are bringing out a new brand called Heimland by Bakkafrost. For our Scottish salmon, we are launching a brand called Locklander by Bakkafrost that's especially for Europe and North America.
We are also working with more high-end brands for other channels – more fish boutiques, airports, and cruise liners – which will not be high volume, but it shows what's possible with packaging and what's possible with more exclusive cuts of salmon. Other upcoming brands include one here in the Faroes called 18 Islands, and in Scotland, we are running with a brand called Native Hebridean.
For us, value-added is becoming bigger and bigger, but we also know that some of the bigger retailers want their own brand; we are maintaining that business. The percentage of what we do for private-label compared to our own brand is difficult to say, but we are trying to increase our own brands because we think we have the story to back it up.
Photo by Cliff White/SeafoodSource
