“We have agreed to emigrate out of the park,” CEO Nicos Nicolaides told reporters.
Reuters reports that Chile salmon farmer Nova Austral announced that it plans to move its 26 concessions from its site on a national park near the southern tip of Chilean Patagonia to the Magallanes region of Chile.
A recent expansion of Chile’s Alberto de Agostini National Park left the company’s pens within park boundaries.
“We have agreed to emigrate out of the park,” CEO Nicos Nicolaides told reporters in Santiago, adding that the government had not required the company remove the pens. Nicolaides is the former COO of AquaChile, Salmones Blumar and Pesquera El Golfo.
The company said it would invest USD 80 million over two years to relocate.
Nova Austral, owned by investment funds Bain Capital and Altor Fund III, operates only in the pristine waters of far southern Chile. It also owns the Sixty South brand that produces salmon in the 60th southern parallel, one of the areas in South America closest to Antartica.
Nicolaides told reporters the region’s cool waters have allowed the company to raise salmon without the use of antibiotics since 2015.
