Over 200,000 tonnes of salmon to be produced annually.
Yesterday, Chilean food processor Agrosuper signed an agreement to buy 67 percent of the shares in Chile’s largest aquaculture company, AquaChile. It is now expected that the salmon farmer, Los Fiordos, owned by Agrosuper, will merge with AquaChile after the acquisition.
This sends Chile’s new farming giant straight to the top of the list of the world’s largest salmon farmers – in front of Cermaq, Lerøy and SalMar, but still behind market leader, Marine Harvest.
Figures from SalmonBusiness have shown that AquaChile has a harvest volume of 91,000-94,000 tonnes, distributed among the Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout and coho species. Los Fiordos harvested around 60,000 -70,000 salmon tons annually, according to the Chilean newspaper, Aqua.
Los Fiordios bought the salmon division Friosur in June. With the acquisition, Los Fiordos received a production increase of 22,000 tonnes.
Furthermore, AquaChile bought Salmon’s Magallanes and Pesquera Edén in June with the two companies producing 22,900 tons of salmon each year.
This means that the new salmon giant can now produce over 200,000 tonnes of salmon annually. By comparison, Marine Harvest produced 370,346 tons of salmon in 2017.