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Salmo Terra, Graintec file for bankruptcy

Salmo Terra, the company that would have built Norway’s largest land-based salmon farm, filed for bankruptcy after racking up NOK 32 million ( US$3 million) in debt and failing to attract enough investors. Graintec, a Danish recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) contractor that was hired by the Norwegian aquaculture firm in 2021, also filed for bankruptcy just days after Salmo Terra.

Salmo Terra was having trouble attracting investors. The company was also sued by Øygarden Næringspark AS, a Norway-based landowner, for failure to pay rent amount to NOK 4 million, according to the publication, We Are Aquaculture. Norwegian district court proceedings indicated that Salmo Terra’s total debts amounted to NOK 32 million.

Salmo Terra was founded in 2017. The company planned to build a RAS facility will be located in Øygarden, just outside Bergen, Norway. The total production capacity of the facility was estimated at 8,000 tons annually. This would have made it the largest such facility in the country. Salmo Terra hoped to start construction by the summer of 2022.

The company hired Graintec to provide it with RAS technology. At that time, Graintec had been supplying salmon feed plants and feeding solutions to aquaculture companies for more than two decades. This was, however, Graintec’s first time to wade into RAS construction. Graintec would later provide the RAS feeding system for Proximar Seafood’s RAS operations in Japan in February 2023.