Canadian boat-builders feel they have the eyes of Norway’s well-financed fleet operators on them, as they begin serving what they hope is Newfoundland’s next aquaculture wave, starting with Grieg NL’s CAD 250 million Placentia Bay project.
“Now we also have companies in Norway looking at our vessels as a possible addition to their fleets,” Paul Lannon, general manager of Harbour Grace Ocean Enterprises, was quoted by CBC News as saying. He was at a Grieg NL townhall meeting this week in Marystown.
Grieg NL, the CBC reported, “is expected to commission” Lannon’s company to build seven vessels worth more than CAD 3.5 million. Months ago, SalmonBusiness reported the Norway-based salmon-farmer would be using local vessels to meet most of its service needs.
Read Grieg NL, Aqualine, face March start at Placentia Bay
Read Greig NL, Ocean Choice, form seafood JV
Wellboats — none of which are built in Canada — will have to come from elsewhere, although Canadian shipyards have been encouraged to update and upgrade their manufacturing capacity with federal government support for innovation and cleaner-burning vessels. Provincial builders of shellfish vessels are understood to have been among the first to take up the offer.
Grieg’s townhall meeting reportedly attracted around 200 people in Marystown, and via Webcast, in three other locations. Apart from disclosing that it already had Federal clearance for its plans and now only needed provincial approval, the company said it would process sludge and ensilage from fish faeces and dead fish for further processing and sale as fertiliser and as a gas made in an anaerobic digestor that’ll process waste into the energy form for a dairy farm on the coast.
Grieg NL plans a nursery for sterile Atlantic salmon at the Marystown Marine Industrial park, from where it’ll feed its area grow-outs out in Placentia Bay. The net-pens are expected to come from Norway-based Aqualine.
Read Grieg hope renews on Canada megaproject
