Salmon Evolution entered into an investment agreement with Dongwon Industries, one of the world’s leading seafood enterprises based in South Korea, whereby Dongwon will make a NOK 50 million ($5.5 million) investment to acquire a minority share in Salmon Evolution.

Under the terms of the agreement, the two partners further plan to enter into a partnership on jointly constructing a land-based fish farm in South Korea utilizing Salmon Evolution’s technology. They will also jointly consider future opportunities for scaling similar projects in other Asian markets as well as the North American market.

“This is a very exciting opportunity for us,” said Håkon André Berg, CEO at Salmon Evolution. “The collaboration with a global player like Dongwon Industries will strengthen our commercial opportunities as well as giving us solid industrial support for scaling our concept in new markets.”

“After assessing several projects for land-based fish farming enterprises, we concluded that Salmon Evolution represents the best investment and partnership opportunity in the sector,” explained Kiyun Yun, Dongwon’s CFO. “We believe that Salmon Evolution’s technology does the best job of recreating natural marine conditions while avoiding the many challenges faced by conventional fish farming in the sea.”

Salmon Evolution began in May the construction of a land-based fish farm in western Norway at Indre Harøy, Hustadvika municipality. This facility will be based on 65% reuse and 35% supply of filtered and temperature-controlled seawater, which will contribute to optimal operations and substantially reduce risk compared with other types of land-based aquaculture using virtually full water recirculation. On completion, the fish farm at Indre Harøy will have an annual production capacity of about 36,000 tons of Atlantic salmon.