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Nordic Aqua reports lower harvest volumes due to off-flavour

Nordic Aqua, an Atlantic salmon RAS farmer, has announced that about 190 metric tonnes of head-on-gutted (HOG) fish are ready to be harvested after detecting an off-flavour compound in the fish.

The company said its farm, located in Ningbo, China, experienced overloading of the purging unit and a high concentration of the off-flavour compound, geosmin, a naturally occurring compound known to be absorbed by fish in all recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). It is harmless to both fish and humans, but in elevated concentration, it can negatively affect the fish’s taste, the company said in its operational update. 

“Our Atlantic salmon has since its launch in April received very good feedback in the market. However, following recent quality checks, elevated levels of geosmin were identified in specific production sections. As a result, the affected salmon, 190 MT HOG, will not be sold for human consumption but thus at a substantially lower price,” said Andreas Thorud, the managing director of Nordic Aqua (Ningbo) Co., Ltd.

Nordic Aqua said after this harvesting, the purging department (eight tanks) will be emptied, disinfected and refilled with pure, cleaned water, and new salmon will eventually be moved to purging. As one element of the incident was overstretching the purging capacity, purging department will be restarted in a controlled manner. This will thus further impact the harvest volume for the second half of 2024.

The company said this hitch will negatively impact revenue in the third quarter and the slower than planned harvest will possibly also influence the fourth quarter.

“Nordic Aqua has given focus on recruiting the best of competence and experience and have chosen to go for the highest quality partnership suppliers, such as AKVA Group and Skretting. This has again proven to be a critical part of our strategies, as issues like this are dealt with, in an efficient manner, based on deep and broad insight,” said Ragnar Joensen, CEO, Nordic Aqua.