What next for Atlantic Sapphire? CEO confronts challenges, charts path forward.
Atlantic Sapphire CEO Pedro Courard delivered a brutally honest assessment of the company’s struggles, at the North Atlantic Seafood Forum (NASF) in Bergen last week, admitting to erratic operations, high losses, and fundamental missteps in managing its Miami-based land-based salmon farm.
While insisting that things are now moving in the right direction, the reality is clear: Atlantic Sapphire has spent years learning how to operate the a flawed facility—and at enormous cost.
From Crisis to Stability?
“The process was very erratic, generating high losses. Not mentioning this would not be very honest,” Courard admitted. His comments marked a departure from the industry’s usual corporate optimism, instead laying bare the scale of the company’s difficulties.
Atlantic Sapphire’s early challenges included an overstocked system that couldn’t adequately feed its fish, leading to a culling process that only concluded last month. Despite achieving a survival rate of 97-98%, Courard revealed that feed conversion and biomass growth had not been properly addressed in production meetings. “The focus was on the machinery and not on the fish,” he said.
A shift in priorities has since taken place, with stricter maintenance and cleaning protocols, improved feed conversion, and a renewed emphasis on fish health. The company has also taken back control of filleting operations, improving processing yields by 7%. “Today everything is moving in the right direction,” Courard insisted. “We will not make promises.”
Turning the Corner
CFO Gunnar Nielsen outlined the company’s new trajectory, reporting that average fish size has now reached 2.4kg, with the goal of hitting premium product sizes in the third and fourth quarters of 2025. Eliminating bottlenecks remains a key focus, as improvements in the system will allow for better feeding capacity in the coming months.
More significantly, Nielsen confirmed that Atlantic Sapphire plans to resume construction on Phase 2 of its facility later this year—if it can secure funding. The expanded system, incorporating lessons learned from Phase 1, will include a dedicated high-efficiency chiller plant and, when completed, bring total production capacity to 25,000 tonnes.
However, the road ahead is far from certain. Atlantic Sapphire is still in the process of raising capital for its expansion, and investors will be weighing its track record of operational struggles against its potential to finally deliver at scale.
With the industry watching closely, the big question remains: Can Atlantic Sapphire truly turn the page and establish itself as a profitable, large-scale producer of land-based salmon, or will it continue to be defined by its growing pains?
