Video shows car-plant scale amid agricultural land
A new video showing Atlantic Sapphire’s giant land-based grow-out in Florida reveals a neat, futuristic tableau of a sprawling facility based on the recirculation of well water.
It’ll be the world’s decidedly largest on-land facility sprawled out over a strip of land alongside other strips of soil-based crops. It’s a subtle but clear hint that aquaculture in many countries is regulated as agriculture and commoditized into the “natural resource” ledgers of investment firms.
Atlantic Sapphire’s facility features a hatchery, a smolt nursery of dozens of tanks, full-scale grow-out for some 20,000 tonnes and its own feed plant. Salmon City will also benefit in the market for having onsite fish processing and offices.
Coming soon
A first phase is scheduled to deliver 8,000 tonnes of gutted-weight salmon, with first trays of roe scheduled to hatch next year.
“We’ll have tubs of 17.5 meters diameter, 7 m tall. Because of hurricanes, it’ll be damn expensive to get them any higher here in Florida,” owner Johan Andreassen told Salmon Business staff in October 2017.
Fivefold hike in U.S. production
“In a year we’ll bring in the roe. In three years we’ll process the first fish,” he said.
When the whole facility if finished, the plant will have capacity to produce 90,000 tonnes of salmon. That’s more than enough to up U.S. production fivefold and to create the world’s fifth-largest salmon producer in the world.
In phase 1, Atlantic Sapphire will spend USD110 million. “The reason we’re here is the water. There are no neighbours or landowners complaining. Escapes are impossible. And it costs just 50,000 dollars to drill a well,” Andreassen said.
