Doug Caines, the General Manager of Northern Harvest Sea Farms (NHSF) operation in Newfoundland, said that the company has recently expanded its production level in the province.
Caines said that the company has added 54 cages at three grow-out sites in its Coast of Bays operation in 2011. These new sites are located in the Rencontre East area of the COB.
Caines said, "We put two million smolts in the 54 new cages back in June. This is major investment on our part, and a big leap of faith for NHSF. However, we have a good team of 23 workers from Rencontre East who are doing a great job in raising the fish for us.
"We're moving to a new level of production with the introduction of these new fish which means that at the moment our company has about six million fish in the water in the COB at various stages of growth.
"With normal survival and growth rates, we should be able to reach a production level of 18,000 tonnes in 2012."
With the addition of the three new grow-out sites, NHSF has over 20 grow-out sites at various locations in the COB.
Caines said that the company's goal is to place four million new smolts in the water annually.
To help meet this goal, NHSF is building a salmon hatchery in Stephenville for its operation in the COB.
While the hatchery may not see its first full production cycle until May 2013, the first fish eggs are expected to be put in one of the tanks in early November with the first fish to come out of the hatchery in September of 2012.
The company is also upping the ante in its production levels by introducing other technologies too.
In June, NHSF used a well boat, the "Froyfisk", to deliver its smolt to the Rencontre area and will use the boat to harvest its fish when they reach processing size by the fall of 2012.
Caines said that well boat is equipped with tanks or holds that are oxygenated and have the proper equipment to handle fish in the right manner. A big advantage of a well boat is that the vessel can harvest 7 to 8 loads of fish at a time. This is really important in cases where weather may play a part in harvesting and the company needs to meet market demands.
Company reaching maximum production levels
Caines said that while his company needs a few more grow-out sites for efficient rotation and fallowing he feels that NHSF is well on its way to reaching its planned maximumn level of production.
He said, "A few years ago, company and government officials were saying we could triple our production in this area. While that may have been true then, the industry is already quite close to producing about 50,000 tonnes a year.
" While I can't speak for other companies, we're certainly not going to keep tripling our production efforts every few years from now on. Our company alone will reach about 18,000 tonnes next year."
