Håvard Grøntvedt has worked with salmon since he was 12 years old. First as a boy at home on Frøya. He later ran a farm and processing plant in Nova Scotia, Eastern Canada, received a fishing fellowship in New York and worked as a regional director for Mowi in Norway, Scotland and Canada.
In 2017, he sold out of the biofuel company Biokraft, which he helped start. After which, he launched his own startup, Nidaros Shipping, after receiving a request from a farmer in Canada, and buying a service catamaran.
“The catamaran was bought for NOK 9 million (€900,000), and even though I knew what it was to be used for, I did not quite know what I was going for. The boat sat for three months at a shipyard in Vancouver before it was granted approval to operate from the Canadian authorities. It was the first specialized farming service boat on Canada’s west coast,” Grøntvedt told Norwegian business newspaper Dagens Næringsliv.
The business is going well. Nidaros Shipping owns six boats, with a seventh on the way.
The boats are rented to Mowi, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, and are used for mooring work, shipping, as an auxiliary vessel for slaughtering – and for processing the salmon on site.
Last year, the company achieved a profit before tax of NOK 29 million (€3 million) – up from NOK 14 million (€1.4 million) the year before. Grøntvedt is the sole owner of the company.
He does not plan to expand further on the Canadian west coast, but tells DN that he is considering expansion to other “interesting” markets such as Scotland, the Mediterranean and Iceland.
