Sustainability gives Atlantic Sapphire an advantage in the competition against other brands in the salmon market.
“We pump 12,000 gallons of water per minute,” said Johan Andreassen, founder, chairman and CEO of Atlantic Sapphire.
The company’s newly built aquaculture facility, on a piece of land just outside Miami, is a power-intensive industry. There is a lot of water being pumped in and out of the tanks at the plant.
Windmill
At Atlantic Sapphire’s subsidiary Langsand Laks’ plant in the seaside resort of Hvide Sande in Denmark, a wind turbine is located near the fish farm. Precisely power consumption, and that this power is as clean as possible, is an important element when third-party actors are to assess the company’s environmental footprint.
“Florida is the cheapest state in the United States for electricity. We produce it cheaper here than in Denmark,” said the salmon farmer’s Head of Offtake Damien Claire.
“Florida is “The Sunshine State”. Solar cells are planned a few miles from here. So we will be able to connect to the web there in a few years,” added Andreassen.
Sustainable
Atlantic Sapphire’s salmon is already green certified by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s list of sustainable seafood. Claire does not believe it will be difficult to obtain similar certification in ASC (Aquaculture Stewartship Council).
“We are already the highest certified. We will comply with ASC, no problem,” he said with certainty.
We in @atlsapphire are proud to be partners with @SeafoodWatch Blue Is The New Green! https://t.co/jxeCYcUVcO
— Johan Andreassen (@andreassenjohan) 15 April 2019
“We are also certified by Whole Foods. They have their own standard,” said Andreassen, who has had the American supermarket chain as a regular customer back to the time he led Villa Organic.
Yield
“There are many brands – Verlasso, Sixty South and so on – but the difference between these is small. We are doing something completely different,” he said about land-based farming activities in Denmark and the USA.
“80 acres. It’s not a huge amount of land. But we can produce 90,000 tonnes here. Yield per acre is very high,” he pointed out.
The power generation at the plant is 10,000 kilowatts, divided into five generators. In the event of a power failure, Atlantic Sapphire can take power production to diesel.
