Marine Harvest Canada has quietly used the first working day of December 2017 to mark a number of milestones expected to impact earnings in 2018.
The company has opened a new secondary fish-processing plant in Surrey, B.C., near the U.S. border over which it exports. It’s also welcomed a new, 62-tonne workboat and Aquaculture Stewardship Council certification for its Hardwicke grow-outs.
The Surrey plant will produce easily prepared meals and package fresh salmon for sale in Western Canada and the United States. Fresh fish entered the plant on December 1st, but the plant will ramp up processing to 12,000 t a year and add 75 full-time jobs.
“The new value-added plant will complement our primary processing plants in Port Hardy and Klemtu, and like our farming operations, we are confident it will be globally competitive,” Vincent Erenst, managing director at MHC, was quoted as saying. The plant sits on an existing freight route for the company’s salmon, so no additional cost for processing.
With primary plant waste water under scrutiny in the province of late, Marine Harvest Canada was keen to make clear the secondary processing plant has no “bloody effluent”. It’s primary processing plant at Port Hardy spent CAD6.5 million in 2011 to process effluent water from fish-processing plant into “clean” water that’ll be returned to the bay.
Meanwhile, the company’s Stewardship accreditation might also boost taste pallets, as the standard was developed together with the World Wildlife Fund as part of its Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue with 500 farmers, conservationists, scientists, seafood buyers and government officials from Canada, Chile, Norway and Scotland.
