Atlantic Sapphire announced on Sunday that it was compelled to harvest salmon at its US facility earlier than planned because of “above normal and increasing mortality in certain systems.”
The Homestead, Florida-based salmon producer said that as a result of the untimely harvests, the average harvest weight in the second half of 2022 will be around 2 kg HOG.
“The company continues to investigate the cause of the above normal mortality in certain fish systems to be able to take further corrective actions and minimize future mortality,” the company said.
It did not reveal the volume of fish that died nor the volume of fish that had was harvested early.
It still expects to receive an average premium price of approximately $12/kg for its bigger fish weighing 3 kgs and above.
This is not the first time that Atlantic Sapphire was forced to harvest early because of high mortality rates.
Read also:Why is Atlantic Sapphire destroying 62.5% of its emergency harvest?
“There will always be risk in what we do,” CFO and managing director Karl Øystein Øyehaug acknowledged at the RASTECH Virtual Summit 2022 on October 6.
Two of the biggest improvements the company has done over the past several months was adjusting water chemistry parameters to mitigate risk and splitting the growout systems – originally just six – into virtually 12 independent systems, Øyehaug said.
“When I say independent, that means they’re not sharing water with the neighbouring systems. We found a way to split each of those, so we effectively have 12 systems. It was important for us to minimize the impact. If something unexpected happens, only a very small part of our biomass would be impacted by it.”
He added that harvest in 2H of the year would be between 800,000 to one million fish, most of that happening in Q4.
On Sunday, the company said the revenue for 2H of 2022 is estimated to be around the same level as in the 1H of 2022.
Read also: Despite tough environment, Atlantic Sapphire says it has funds to complete Phase 2 facility
