Atlantic Sapphire, which is planning a massive land-based recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) in Miami, Florida, U.S.A., was approved to receive up to USD 5 million (EUR 4.6 million) in local incentives to expand its facility and create more than 200 jobs.
The Miami-Dade County Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution authorizing funding through the county’s Targeted Jobs Incentive Fund, an inducement program for out-of-county companies looking to relocate and create jobs over the next 10 years.
Atlantic Sapphire plans to make a USD 340 million (EUR 312 million) capital investment to build a 1.1-million-square-foot manufacturing and fish processing plant, retain 54 workers and create 237 new jobs over a three-year period, according to application documents. The new facility would be in addition to the company’s current, and future, salmon recirculating aquaculture system facility. As a condition of the TJIF funding, Atlantic Sapphire agreed that the 237 new workers hired will have an average annual salary of USD 60,000 (EUR 55,206).
In application documents, the company also noted that alternative location options for the facility include Georgia, Texas, or Maine.
Atlantic Sapphire is on track to complete the first phase of its Miami project in July. The facility, which will be used to grow Atlantic salmon, is one of the largest RAS farms planned in the world with an anticipated yield of 220,000 metric tons (MT) by 2030. The initial phase will have a capacity of 10,000 MT head-on gutted, and is slated to be harvested around the time phase one is complete.
“We’re still on track to have it ready by July, everything will be completely commissioned and finished,” Lola Navarro, sustainability, community engagement and press manager for Atlantic Sapphire told SeafoodSource in January. “From there, we’re just going to be farming, without having to be building at the same time, so that’s very exciting.”
