Stofnfiskur hf, a Benchmark Genetics company, successfully shipped Atlantic salmon ova from Iceland to its customers in China. This is the second ova delivery to China after the COVID-19 crisis hit Europe in mid-March.
The shipment, consisting of nearly 400,000 eggs, was shipped from Reykjavik on April 16 and safely arrived in Beijing the following day. Quality check was made upon arrival and then the boxes were shipped on domestic flights for delivery to three different customers. Two of the customers operate land-based farms, and the third one is a cage farm in a freshwater lake. They are all regular customers of Benchmark Genetics.
"We are very pleased that the logistics so far have gone well," said Robert Rúnarsson, global sales manager of Benchmark Genetics. “It is a challenge to plan airline shipments these days due to the COVID-19 crisis. Flight cancellations and changes are made in the short term. Fortunately, there are still daily connections between Iceland and Europe that make it possible for our products to be exported to the global market,” he said.
StofnFiskur has many customers around the world and is the largest supplier of ova for the growing land-based aquaculture industry. This type of customer is very concerned about biosecurity and the production model of StofnFiskur gives them confidence that they will not introduce unwanted pathogens into the RAS-systems through eggs, the company said. Broodstock in Iceland is kept on land throughout the entire life cycle and the water supplies come from deep boreholes that are completely free of infectious pathogens. The company’s closed compartments have been approved by MAST in Iceland following the OIE standard and they are the only ova producer in Europe to have achieved this. StofnFiskur recently renewed the OIE certificate and therefore remains still the only foreign company that can deliver eggs to Chile.
“Aquaculture companies that run full-cycle land-based production also require deliveries every single month of the year and we are proud to be able to meet their needs,” concluded Rúnarsson.
