A foot in both camps

Marine Harvest Chile is a world away from its Scottish counterpart

NO other company has the hold on Atlantic salmon farming, north and south, that Marine Harvest does. It claims a 25 per cent share in the Scottish Industry, where it operates 33 freshwater and seawater sites, and about 18 per cent of the Chilean market through Marine Harvest Chile, which has two hatcheries, five lake sites and 12 sea farms.

Poor prices for farmed salmon worldwide put a constraint on marketing and production last year, but Chile still exported a total of 12,498 tonnes of Atlantic salmon, 14,915 tonnes of Pacific salmon and 5,527 tonnes of trout.

Exploiting to the full the superb farming conditions around Puerto Montt, the company deploys its farms comprising 40 or more 12x12m pens each, to average 340,000 fish per farm.

In 1991, the total production of the feed side was 11,500 tonnes, of which about 15 per cent was sold to third parties.