The two Japanese giants Mitsubishi and Maruha Nichiro agree to establish a new joint venture in land-based salmon farming.
The new joint company, named ATLAND Corporation, will start building of the land-based farm in the town of Nyuzen, on the Japanese west coast. The production capacity will be 2,500 tonnes.
“Mitsubishi Corporation and Maruha Nichiro Corporation are pleased to announce our agreement to establish a new joint venture company, ATLAND Corporation (ATLAND), that will specialize in the land-based production of salmon. ATLAND will be established in Nyuzen town of Toyama prefecture in around October 2022,” the statement says.
“There are few suitable locations for conventional salmon aquaculture, due to the need for year-round low seawater temperatures, mild weather and wave activity. For those reasons, the vast majority of the world’s farmed salmon is produced in Norway and Chile, but expectations are that global demand for this high-quality animal protein will continue to grow in the future. The aim of our joint project is to create a local-production-for-local-consumption business model in Japan’s salmon industry.”
The companies are expecting the new model to have a lower greenhouse gas emission than the practice of importing salmon from other countries.
The talks regarding the joint venture started as far back as March 2021.
Mitsubishi will own 51 percent of the new company, while Maruha Nichiro will own 49 percent.
