Investors aim to farm Saudi salmon

The desert kingdom of Saudi Arabia, long synonymous with its oil wealth, may soon produce and export a less likely commodity: farm-raised salmon.

Vikings Label FZC, a company majority owned by Norwegian investors, is planning to set up the country’s first salmon farming project, aiming to supply Saudi consumers with as much as 5,000 tons of the coldwater fish annually by 2023.

The facility will cost about $90m, and the company is seeking $25m of that from investors, CEO Lukas Havn said. So far, one Saudi investor Hani al-Saleh, CEO of transport services company Arabian Hala has pledged funds to the project, Havn said.

Seafood companies such as Vikings Label see growth opportunities in Saudi Arabia, which is increasingly promoting healthy lifestyles and eating habits as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s broader strategy to overhaul the economy and transform society.

Aquaculture is one of the businesses for which Saudi officials hope to attract investment. Vikings Label would be the country’s first salmon farm,’ s according National Fisheries to the government Development Programme.

The company hopes to start building fish tanks and other aquaculture facilities north of the Red Sea city of Jeddah in the first quarter of 2020, Havn said.

“The farm will be built in a way that’s expandable, so production can reach up to 10,000 tons,” he said.

Saudi authorities want to almost double per capita fish consumption in the country to 13kg by the end of 2020 and to 22kg the global average by 2030.

5,000 the tons of fish the project aims to supply each year by 2023

13 the kilograms per capita consumption of fish that Saudi authorities hope for