NZ King Salmon posts $28.5m profit

NZ King Salmon has posted a $28.5 million profit after tax for the year to January 31, up from $1.9m the previous year.

Chairperson Mark Dewdney said the second half of the year continued a turnaround which started in 2023 financial year. The Nelson-based company had implemented new farming strategies that had reduced summer fish mortality, Dewdney said.

In recent years, high summer temperatures have killed off the company’s fish, prompting it to fallow three of its four farms in Pelorus Sound and to move to an earlier harvest in Queen Charlotte Sound.

Chief executive Carl Carrington said the year ended slightly weaker than expected.

Changes to production plans last year meant there was a period of smaller fish in the last quarter, he said.

“Unfortunately, the size of the fish did create some challenges with export markets.” However, production was back to normal sized fish, Carrington said.

NZ King Salmon is betting its future growth on a planned expansion into the cooler open ocean by developing the country’s first open ocean finfish site in Cook Strait, a project it calls Blue Endeavour.

Carrington said work was about to start on the Blue Endeavour farm pilot.

In late February the company received resource consent for the farm, 7km north of Cape Lambert, in Cook Strait. The process has taken more than nine years and cost millions of dollars that could have been used elsewhere, Carrington said.

The focus this year would be on completing the monitoring and ordering the equipment for a pilot farm.

Blue Endeavour has the potential to add up to 10,000 tonnes of harvest volume when fully developed and an export value of of up to $300,000 a year.

The company has previously estimated this and its existing sites would give it total harvest capacity of about 17,000 tonnes.

The Government wants to grow aquaculture to a multi-billion dollar industry and Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones said earlier this month that removing “unnecessary barriers” to make approval processes for such projects easier and quicker was priority.

And artist’s impression of the NZ King Salmon Blue Endeavour open ocean farm project, which has been approved to open.