Marine Harvest welcomes Scottish feed plant approval
MARINE Harvest secured planning approval for its Sottish feed plant on Skye, following a meeting of Highland Council last month.
Construction of the £93 million facility will start by the end of March and is expected to be completed during 2018.
The state of the art feed plant will employ 55 people and will be one of the most efficient and sustainable fish feed plants globally, said the company.
The salmon farmer also intends to go ahead with building a visitor centre on Skye and already has a site earmarked and is currently looking at architect plans.
Marine Harvest also announced it would start to investigate the business case for a small scale fish meal and fish oil plant in Scotland.
Bjorn Erik Flem, managing director of Marine Harvest Ingredients, said:‘We are seeing rapidly increasing demand for salmon meal and salmon oil in sectors such as pet food and human nutrition, due to the health benefits associated with omega-3 fish oils.
‘At the same time, we see the current solution for salmon mortality is expensive and not as sustainable as we would like. I am confident we can do this better and as we integrate the business in Scotland, we must create an efficient and circular green economy.
‘Firstly, we can produce fish feed or fishmeal/fish oil from salmon by-products such as heads, guts and backbones.Then, in addition, we can generate e biogas from salmon mortality in one part of the plant to use as an energy source for the production of the fish meal or oil in another part of the plant.’
Marine Harvest first announced its plans to build a feed plant in Scotland early last year. The site at Altanavaig (or Allt Anavig) quarry at Kyleakin is more than large enough to accommodate the development which will include the feed plant itself as well as raw material storage silos, product storage and packaging, a loading area and car parking.
Managing director Ben Hadfield said:‘I’m delighted with the positive decision from the local authority and even more heartened by the overwhelming support we have had from the local community.’