Cooke Aquaculture is planning to spend $150 million (€107.4 million) over five years to expand its Nova Scotia operations.
Canada-based Cooke currently has six fish farms in Nova Scotia, primarily producing salmon. But all of the fish grown in the Bluenose province are shipped to New Brunswick for processing in Charlotte County.
Nell Halse, company vice-president of communications, said the plan is to build a processing plant in Nova Scotia to handle the fish harvested in the province.
But that cannot happen, she said, until the company boosts its production in Nova Scotia.
The company is now awaiting approval of two new Nova Scotia fish farms, slated for the Brier Island area. (Cooke currently has farms in Nova Scotia in Digby, Shelburne, Brier Island and St Margaret's Bay outside of Halifax.)
If the new farms are approved, the company will push forward with plans for both the processing plant and a fish hatchery to supply the Nova Scotia farms, Halse said.
"If we get a positive decision on the two farms before the New Year, we will move full speed ahead in searching out a site for a hatchery and begin some of this investment," she said.
"We have been very clear for a long time that we would need to have enough production at Nova Scotia farms to justify opening a processing plant."
Halse said the facility would be built somewhere in southwest Nova Scotia but that a site had not been identified yet.
Cooke started in 1985 as Kelly Cove Salmon with a single cage of 5,000 salmon. Today, the company has operations in New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Maine and Chile.
Cooke processes and sells more than 115 million pounds of Atlantic salmon and 35 million pounds of trout each year.
[Source: New Brunswick Business Journal]
