King Salmon frustrated
AUCKLAND: New Zealand King Salmon hopes it will be allowed to move around half of nine hectares of its Marlborough Sounds fish farms to better locations, but is braced for a ‘‘disappointing’’ outcome for both the company’s growth and environmental outcomes.
At the Aquaculture New Zealand conference in Blenheim, NZKS managing director Grant Rosewarne expressed frustration at the likelihood of a ‘‘suboptimal outcome’’.
Leaving 4.5ha of the 9ha of existing farms in place would be worse for both productivity and the environment ‘‘when we can get a world’s best practice environmental outcome a kilometre away,’’ he said.
Fisheries Minister Stuart Nash is expected to take recommendations on the proposed relocations to Cabinet before Christmas, with a decision pencilled in for February.
Mr Nash told the aquaculture conference the industry needed to innovate more and invest in high value brands to maximise export revenues.
However, Mr Rosewarne said NZKS was already producing ‘‘the most highly branded salmon in the world, with highly differentiated products. We’re getting high prices’’ but slow regulatory processes were impeding growth potential.
Mr Nash said the newly created Fisheries New Zealand agency, split off from the Ministry for Primary Industries, would deliver a new aquaculture strategy within the next year and strongly backed emerging deepsea fish farming technology.
‘‘The sooner we get into that space, the better,’’ he told BusinessDesk. ‘‘The consumer wants that, local iwi want that, communities want that.
Mr Rosewarne said barely 20 surface hectares of salmon farming was consented in New Zealand, ‘‘17 hectares of which are ours, and half of which is no good’’.
Moving the whole nine surface hectares in question ‘‘should not be a hard thing’’, he said.