13.5 thousand extra tonnes needed to justify new salmon plant, said Glenn Cooke.
Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke told 150 Halifax business leaders in Nova Scotia, Canada on Thursday that: “We need to increase fish production levels in Nova Scotia before the company will consider buying a plant.”
“In 2019, we are spending over CAD 20 million (EUR 13.2 million) in Nova Scotia to upgrade buildings and infrastructure. This is on top of the CAD 51.5 million (EUR 34 million) Cooke spent in Nova Scotia in 2018 buying goods and services from 305 local suppliers,” he added.
The salmon farmer also said that last year they put EUR 5 million into Northeast Nutrition as part of a 4 year- EUR 20 million fish feed manufacturing expansion to increase thruput by 40% in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada.
“Our proposed sea site farming expansion in Liverpool Bay is a critical piece to our plans to increase production volume in Atlantic Canada,” Cooke added.
“Our goal is to produce more salmon in Nova Scotia,” added Cooke, who said that the company needs to produce about around 13.5 thousand tonnes of salmon per year to proceed.
Kelly Cove Salmon, the Canadian salmon farming division of Cooke Aquaculture, has applied to the Government of Nova Scotia for two new twenty-cage sea sites and the expansion of an existing site in Liverpool Bay from fourteen to twenty cages.
“A modern aquaculture sea farm would typically stock around 600,000 fish per site. If approved, the Liverpool sites would be comparable in size to other farms in Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada,” a Cooke spokesperson told SalmonBusiness.
Kelly Cove Salmon has been operating an Atlantic salmon farm in Liverpool Bay since 2011 when the company acquired an existing aquaculture site that was established in 2002.
“These new Liverpool sites will allow Kelly Cove Salmon to improve its operational efficiencies in production and harvesting and will result in up to 20 new direct jobs. A larger operation will require more services and materials to be purchased in the community creating the potential for an aquaculture service hub to be established in the area. With this expansion, other aspects of Kelly Cove and Cooke Aquaculture operations, such as fresh water hatcheries, feed production and trucking will expand accordingly,” the Cooke spokesperson added.
