Camanchaca plans to seriously increase its salmon production in the years to come, the company announced in its Q3 result report.
This year, Camanchaca expects to harvest 39,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon and trout, and in 2018 the company expects to be harvesting 51,000 tonnes. By 2023, this amount should be increased to 64,000 tonnes, a rise of 78 percent counting from 2016.
Camanchaca will also harvest Atlantic salmon at farms leased to third parties from 2019 onwards.
Sale to China
Salmones Camanchaca owns a stake in the company ‘New World Currents’ since 2013, a joint venture with three other Chilean producers, for the sale of salmon to China, focussing on value-added products. These products account for 81 percent of sales for the period to September 2017. The remainder are sales of fresh whole salmon. Camanchaca’s fresh Atlantic salmon fillets are sold mainly in the U.S.; frozen Atlantic salmon fillets and portions in Europe; fresh or frozen whole Atlantic salmon in Asia (excluding Japan); frozen Atlantic salmon fillets in Japan; whole fresh Atlantic salmon in Brazil and frozen Atlantic salmon fillets in the rest of Latin America.
Fair value adjustment
EBIT for the company’s salmon farming division was US$ 28.2 million in September 2017 (4.0 million in September 2016). The net effect of the fair value adjustment for the salmon biomass for the period ended September 30, 2017, is a gain of US$8 million, as opposed to the gain of US$35.6 million recorded for the same period in 2016, according to the report. This gain is US$27.6 million lower than for the same period in 2016 due to a combination of lower prices at the end of October 2017 compared to October 2016, reducing the fair value of biomass over 4 kilos, and the reversal of estimated margins already recognized in previous periods on fish sold in this period.
The salmon farming division posted a gross margin before fair value adjustments for the period to September 30 of this year, of US$42.9 million, which is an improvement compared to the US$19.4 million posted last year.
Camanchaca is preparing listing on the Oslo stock exchange in the first quarter of 2018. The operation will help to restructure liabilities and finance the growth program, the company said in the report.