Mowi Scotland named John Richmond, former freshwater manager, as broodstock and post-smolt development manager to develop its programs in Scotland. 

Richmond has worked at Mowi for 21 years and, in this new role, he will oversee the design, tendering, procurement, construction and commissioning of the planned new broodstock and post-smolt facilities. He will also determine how these facilities will work alongside the overall production plans at Mowi Scotland and recruit and train new staff to work in these facilities.

“The broodstock facility will allow us to produce our own ova that we will use in our hatcheries to start the production process. We currently buy these from Mowi Ireland and third parties. We plan to build a seawater recirculation system for post-smolts where the fish will then be grown from the standard smolt size of around 110 g to between 350 g and 800 g before being delivered to sea farms,” said Richmond. “Our objective in post-smolt production is to shorten the length of time that the salmon spend in seawater farms, which will reduce exposure to potential pressures from sea lice and other pathogens. This new strategy will also allow any seawater site using post-smolts to harvest more fish due to the shortening of the production cycle thus allowing more cycles than before within the same timeframe.”

“I am looking forward to seeing how these systems can change and benefit Mowi. I think that our post-smolt production strategy could revolutionize salmon production and help us overcome many of the challenges we have been struggling with for years,” concluded Richmond.