Arctic Smolt, a subsidiary of the salmon farming company Arctic Fish ehf in Iceland’s Westfjords, has entered into two separate agreements on the expansion of the company’s salmon hatchery facility at Nordur Botn in Tálknafjördur, Iceland. 

One contract is with Eykt ehf, an Icelandic construction company that will design and construct the buildings, and another contract with Eyvi AS, an international supplier of RAS turnkey facilities. Eyvi will design, deliver and install a comprehensive solution including a water recirculation system (RAS), piping and auxiliary systems for production. The water is recycled and purified to ensure water quality and high smolt welfare. A backup power station is also a part of the project. Three 1.4 MW generators will be delivered and installed by Aflhlutir ehf. The Faroese aquaculture consultancy SMJ Aqua advised Arctic Fish during the preliminary design and tender phase. 

The project is one of the largest private investment projects in the Westfjords, with an estimated cost of €24 million. Four thousand and two hundred square meters of new floor space with a total of about 7,200 cubic meters of tank space will be added to the existing 10,000 square meters and 6,300 cubic meters of tanks. After the expansion, the hatchery’s annual breeding capacity will be about 1,000 tons of smolt or the equivalent of about five million 200 gram smolts. And from there, it should be possible to farm approximately 25,000 tons of salmon.

“We are growing rapidly as a company and aim to harvest about 24,000 tons within three years. In order to realize this growth and achieve a greater focus on larger smolt, which spend less time at sea, we want to undertake this expansion. We are confident that the people we have partnered with share our objective of building a state-of-the-art grow-out facility, which will provide a foundation for robust aquaculture operations,” says Stein Ove Tveiten, CEO of Arctic Fish.