Salmon farming company FishFrom is due to submit a planning application for the world’s biggest onshore farm, in which the fish will be produced without ever swimming in rivers or the sea.
The Scotsman reports that the £15m farm, to be constructed inside a 3.5-acre warehouse at Tayinloan in Scotland, will produce 3,000 tonnes of salmon a year – about twice the average sea-based farm. FishFrom plans to ship out 800,000 salmon a year from the site.
The company has plans for another onshore farm on the Scottish mainland and hopes to role out the model worldwide in a bid to meet the growing demand for artificially raised fish.
The fish will be grown from the smolt stage – about 50 grammes – into 5kg adults in nine months in tanks through which 32 million litres of fresh and sea water will be pumped every hour. To make the farm economically viable, the tanks will be stocked with twice the density of fish found in conventional farms. The plan is to run the facility on largely green energy, with solar panels and a hydro scheme nearby.
Fish are farmed in closed containment facilities in Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Ireland, North America and China, but FishFrom director Andrew Robertson says the Tayinloan facility will be the biggest so far. “We have carried out extensive feasibility studies and completed our business plan. This will be the largest onshore salmon farm in the world,” said Mr Robertson.
“We already have an international company that supplies prawns direct to Marks and Spencer and they say they will take everything we produce. We also have other customers in France and the UK lined up. We plan to start operations next year. The £15m will take it through to its first year of harvesting. But the farm will produce £12m of sales annually.”
The fish will be fed pellets made from ragworms, algae and amino acids instead of taking fish out of the sea to make fishmeal. The waste from the salmon will be turned into fertiliser instead of “clogging up the ocean”.
