2000 to present The Age of Maturity
At the start of the millennium Marine Harvest reached 40,000 tonnes a year, a milestone that cemented the company’s position as the leader of a global industry. With 1,200 staff in Scotland and Chile and an annual turnover of £90 million, it had come a long way since its inception. In 2006 the company merged with Stolt and Pan Fish, and was officially incorporated as Marine Harvest (Scotland) Ltd and, in 2014, Marine Harvest acquired Meridian Salmon, part of an overall strategy to move the company towards vertical integration.
One of the major transformations in Marine Harvest over the years has been in the professionalisation of its workforce. In the early days there were no standardised proce
dures, structured training courses – and health and safety was non-existent. Now, employees benefit from full training and health and safety awareness, backed up by human resources, occupational health and a range of other support services that make up a large, modern business such as Marine Harvest.
The workforce of Marine Harvest is a healthy combination of experienced staff – many of whom have been with the company for over twenty years – and those entering the industry for the first time. In 2012 the company set up its own apprenticeship scheme, designed to nurture the next generation of Marine Harvest employees with a full programme of academic and inhouse training on all aspects of the business.
Mechanisation
The early 2000s saw the implementation of technologies within Marine Harvest that provided efficient, automated systems across the company. For example, in 2000 and 2001 new feed barges (180-tonne C-Caps) were ordered for eight sites throughout the West Highlands, the Western Isles, Mull and Skye. As feed was Marine Harvest’s single largest cost, finding a system that reduced waste feed and produced consistent growth and quality was vital. The latest feed barges delivered to the company were built by Gael Force, state-of-the-art 400-tonne vessels designed for Marine Harvest’s open-sea sites off the west coast.
The early years of the 2000s also witnessed a huge leap in harvesting technology. In 2000/2001 a lot of research was carried out by Marine Harvest into a more efficient and standardised method of stunning fish, which until then was being done on site using polypropylene priests. The lack of precision with this method affected quality of the end product. This led to the development of pneumatic stunners, which killed automatically with more precision than by hand and improved the quality of the fish. Harvesting at this point was still carried out by mobile teams on site.
The next key development in harvesting came in 2003 with the use of well boats, which would collect 100 tonnes of fish live on site and transport them in tankers, each holding around 18 tonnes of fish, to a central point for harvesting within a couple of hours – reducing the stress on the fish and creating a regular supply of fish to the processing plant. The harvest station in Mallaig, built in 2004, represented the final major transformation in harvesting technology at Marine Harvest.
The Marine Harvest processing plant at Blar Mhor underwent a shift in its technology in the
early 2000s. A major refit of the plant saw the introduction of seven Baader gutting machines capable of processing the volume of fish the company was now producing reliably and efficiently. A new inline hand gutting system to take overflow and rework was also installed, along with inline automated icing of boxes. Apart from some minor additions, the plant has changed little since then. Importantly, the grading of fish within Blar Mhor remains a skilled manual process, which is still the best and most efficient method of checking and grading each fish accurately.
Research and development
Marine Harvest has continued to lead the way in terms of innovation, either by becoming involved in ground breaking initiatives – such as well boat harvesting, or the wrasse projects – or by conducting its own research. One of the key research areas in which Marine Harvest has always been strong is feed and, in 2007, it built a feed trials unit at Ardnish, Lochailort, a state-ofthe-art facility that carries out a number of trials, both in-house and for the major feed manufacturers.
Feed research in the 2000s has become focused on looking at fishmeal and fish oil replacements, to provide economic benefits and improve the company’s sustainability credentials. In 2006 it was the first company in Scotland to introduce vegetable oil into its diets. Through this pioneering research, it has managed to reduce the marine content of its diets from 80 to 30 per cent. It is also currently involved in an important collaborative project, Beans4Feed, which is looking at the use of faba beans to improve the economic and environmental sustainability of UK food production and food security.
The future
The purchase of Meridian Salmon in 2014 represents the last major acquisition for Marine Harvest for the foreseeable future. Further expansion will, therefore, be the result of organic growth. To this end, £80 million was injected into the company to expand its farming capacity. This includes four open sea farms in South Uist, Barra, Muck and Colonsay, which represent a new dawn for the company; advances in technology have for the first time made farming in more exposed locations possible, providing exciting opportunities for farming in the future.
To facilitate the expansion of its sea farming capacity, in 2013 a new £16 million, 13,500m2 recirculation hatchery was built in Lochailort. One of the largest and most technologically advanced of its kind, the unit produces five million smolts, and six million parr annually, in a system that pumps ten million litres of water through the recirculation system every day.
There is no doubt that aquaculture will play an increasingly important role in the provision of efficient, sustainable, healthy and tasty protein to an ever-expanding global population. With its workforce of 520 and production to reach over 50,000 tonnes this year, Marine Harvest Scotland’s commitment to best practice, industry collaboration, research and innovation will ensure that it continues to be an industry leader within the salmon farming sector.
Marine Harvest will continue to be an industry leader within the salmon farming sector”