Mowi Ireland plans to invest €22m in the Irish fish-farm sector
MOWI, a Norwegian seafood company formerly known as Marine Harvest, said it could invest €22m in the Irish market to create up to four new fish farms.
The Irish subsidiary, which has 13 operations across five coastal counties and employs around 300 people here, recently added 46 new staff to its operations. It typically hits annual sales of around €66.1m, but anticipates exceeding €80m this year.
Jan Feenstra, managing director of Mowi Ireland said the Irish operation had been performing ahead of budget.
He said the investment could follow if it can attract more fishing licences.
“If we get the licences we are looking for, and we have new ones in, we could double our employment in a matter of four to five years,” he said. “We have very good solid backers, and they are happy with the way we are approaching our business.
“One new site represents an investment of working capital of around €6m and €7m,” he added. “They would easily support us opening another four sites over the next five years.”
Feenstra said Mowi Ireland had managed to keep the business going as the company offers a niche product with its organic Irish salmon, which performed well in the supermarkets. “Our main customers are people who smoke salmon,” he said. “The smoked salmon business is extremely competitive, and they are fighting for the shelf space in the supermarkets. Those kinds of products actually partially compensated for what we lost with the hotel trade.”
Feenstra said that it was also slowly tapping into new international markets, but the product was a bit more seasonal than Mowi would like it to be, with not enough available for the whole year. “To go into Asia and places like that is very difficult without being able to guarantee supply for 12 months of the year.”
Issues in the meatpacking sector had caused Feenstra some “sleepless nights”, but he was proud of how Mowi had implemented Covid-19 measures.
Feenstra hopes that the new Government will resolve some of the outstanding licensing issues that the fish-farming industry is facing.