RE:Ocean is building a 10,000 metric ton salmon farm in Sweden.
A consortium of prominent investors, including IKEA heir Mathias Kamprad, has taken a stake in RE:OCEAN, Sweden’s first commercial large-scale, land-based salmon farm.
The enterprise has ambitious plans for a 58,000-square-meter facility in Saffle, in west central Sweden, aiming to produce an impressive 10,000 metric tons of salmon annually.
The innovative facility is designed to be all-encompassing, housing all processes from egg incubation to harvest, followed by slaughtering, processing, and packaging.
This seamless production chain ensures that fresh salmon can be directly supplied to supermarkets and dining establishments across Sweden.
Swedes consume an average of 12 kilograms of fish each year, with the vast majority of their salmon being imported.
The new investment group, named Cibonum, which also includes leading European hedge fund manager and philanthropist Per Josefsson, SeaBay Capital founder Pelle Törnberg, and city veteran Per Lindberg among its members, aims to reverse this trend and significantly boost Sweden’s domestic salmon production.
In a press release issued on Wednesday, Cibonum Group’s chairman, Anders Svensson, expressed the consortium’s vision of revolutionising Swedish salmon farming. “With our cutting-edge salmon farming facility in Säffle, we’re poised to cater to 20 percent of the national salmon demand,” he said.
Highlighting the environmental benefits of their venture, Mathias Kamprad, son of IKEA’s founder, Ivan Kamprad, commented, “Our local, sustainable, land-based fish farming model not only promises a more affordable protein source but also drastically reduces environmental footprints, like those from transportation emissions.”
Mathias Kamprad and his siblings control the Ikano Group, a conglomerate born out of managing IKEA’s real estate and financial services. Established in 1988 as a separate entity, today’s Ikano Group is a formidable venture with a valuation of $9.1 billion, spanning interests across banking, real estate, and shopping centers in Asia.
In 2021, Norwegian equipment supplier Akva’s land-based subsidiary signed an engineering and design contract for the project which was then known as Premium Svensk Lax (PSL).
The project is expected to finish construction in 2024.
