The fish farmer has taken MSC to court, as well as the company that provided the fibreglass, of which the damage to the closed containment system, AquaDome, is now the subject of a lawsuit.
On Monday, Cermaq, MSC and Norpartners met in a Norwegian court.
Cermaq is suing both companies for damages EUR 1.4 million, because the company believes manufacturing defects caused the “AquaDome” to fall apart in a storm in 2015.
“To say that “this was a collaboration, everyone contributed, unfortunately it did not work”, is wrong. Cermaq is engaged in fish farming, not with the production of hardware for the aquaculture industry,” said Cermaq’s lawyer, Anders W. Færden during the first day of the lawsuit, according to the publication, Sunnmørsposten.
Wrong way
The central argument from Cermaq’s side is that the reinforcement of the fiberglass must have been laid 90 degrees the wrong way.
MSC and Norpartners will deliver their opening statements on Tuesday.
In their written letter to the court, Norpartners claim that they have not done anything wrong, or something that the other parties did not know about along the way. According to the company, a product specification report was only completed half a year after the completion of the delivery.
“The various reports that conclude that Norpartners has not produced in accordance with product specification, thus builds on an incorrect actual basis,” wrote Norpartner’s lawyer, Øystein Vartdal Riise.
MSC believes that storms are responsible for the accident.
Extreme weather
“It is the extreme weather that caused the accident, and the weaknesses of the construction were insignificant causal factors or irrelevant in the cause,” writes lawyer Jostein Nordbø on behalf of MSC.
Both MSC and Norpartners have demanded full exemption. Should they lose, both have demanded that the other party pay Cermaq’s damages.
New closed cage
According to MSC, Cermaq has received the entire insurance sum (EUR 993.6 thousand) and believes that this money should have been used to produce a new “Aquadome.”
MSC also state that they believe it is unreasonable by Cermaq to make a new closed cage in its own right. Cermaq believes they are the real owner of the “Aquadome”. This weekend, production started in at the fish farmer’s new closed cage system.
