One step ahead

From net mender to inventor and international businessman, Hvalpsund’s Peter Poulsen has travelled far

Peter Poulsen is not feeling 100 per cent, he admits, when I catch him at home in Hvalpsund. He has just returned from a 10-day trip to visit customers in Greenland, and was up at four every morning. Even he agrees this is ‘quite impressive’ for a 72-year-old. ,e was with longline fishermen on this particular trip but these days the ma ority of his business is in fish farming.

,is first in ol ement in a uaculture was in 1979, when he made nets and then cages for a Danish farmer. But he really began in the fishing business much earlier – at 12.

He worked for Valdemar Iveson, a net maker dating back to 1934, as a boy apprentice, mending nets for the local fishing industry in , alpsund. School, said Peter, was every second day, which worked out at about three and a half years of formal education in total.

This has certainly not held him back. He said he always en oyed being around fishing boats, not surprising since the men in his family had been fishermen.

But he did not stand still and was uick to seize the opportunity presented by aquaculture. By the early 80s, he was making plastic cages, not ust for the Danes but for customers in the Faroe Islands, impro ing the product initially to meet demand for stronger steel brackets.

t was an early start to the exporting zeal that established , alpsund firmly in the international market place.

dhere was a cage and ne ng system back then called Bridgestone, but it was not strong enough so Peter helped de elop a product better able to withstand harsh weather conditions.

,e had ac uired technical expertise, both in the factory in Hvalpsund, and then when he spent three years in northern Jutland in a larger operation with 50 other people, working as production manager. He was just 20 years old and already regarded as something of an authority.

He wanted to gain more experience and ‘get a step ahead’ so he had something to bring back to Valdemar, which had primarily been making and mending nets for local trawlers.

,is ambition paid o and in 1974 he was able to buy the company, for 30,000, and steer its growth. tithin fi e years a uaculture was part of the operation, although still a sideline then, with fishing the main business.

A er rapid growth, howe er, by the 1990s the fish farming industry had a big crash , said Ryan Poulsen, Peter’s son and the company’s co-owner and sales manager.

Huge companies went bankrupt and there was a period of a few years when Hvalpsund’s exports diminished. Kne its main markets was still the Faroes but the aquaculture sector there completely closed.

Peter then looked further afield and began to build up Hvalspund in aquaculture markets around the world. By the late nineties the company had not only staged a recovery but transformed from doing 80 per cent of its business in the fishing industry and 20 per cent in aquaculture to around 90 per cent a uaculture and 10 per cent catching.

Peter had always tra elled widely, for fishermen clients before fish farmers, and Ryan reels o the countries – New Realand, Australia, many places in Africa his father has isited, mostly now as a fish farming consultant.

In Ghana and Malawi, where there was no industry, Peter sat down with the community chiefs in the villages, living alongside them in their mud huts. He acted not only as an adviser to the Africans, who wanted to set up tilapia farms, but also worked with the Danish aid company Danida

to help secure grants for the edgling entures.

,e also found funds to transport the Malawi national football team to enmark so they could learn about the anish game Ryan called this pu ng something back into the community . dhe farming system in Malawi was deli ered by , alpsund without charge but with potential returns from a 10 per cent stake in the business.

Peter also recalls his isits to Malta, where he has made nets for tuna cages for the past 13 years. dhe industry there is successful but, as Ryan says, it s a shame that small tuna are har ested by fishermen to grow-on and the farms ha en t managed to rear the species from scratch.

Peter continues to tra el extensi ely and has no intention of slowing down Ryan said his father told him a few weeks ago he would ha e to drag his dead body from the chair before he stopped work that does he most en oy about his tra els t s ery important to hear first-hand what the customers think of the products, said Peter. Ryan said he becomes ery proud with the feedback he gets .

hnlike other businessmen, who might only drop in on the bigger clients, Peter makes a point of fre uenting the more remote places, such as in reenland, where the fishermen li e simple li es,