Amid growing global demand for food, aquaculture companies aim to be bigger players by investing in new feeding processes and betting on elaborate new farming techniques. By 2016, for instance, SalMar AS
Aquaculture, or fish farming, has grown faster than the wild-catch industry in recent decades, and Norway's fish farmers benefited as the nation has become the second-largest exporter of farmed fish behind China. Global output of aquaculture expanded 12-fold between 1980 and 2010 to 60 million tons, while captured fish intake stabilized at 90 million tons, according to the latest data available from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, which tracks fish production.
Total fish trade, including both fish farming and wild catch, grew to $217.5 billion in 2010 from $71.5 billion in 2004, the organization said.
At last count, fish farming accounted for 47% of global fish production, compared to 9% of the stock in 1980, with salmon farmers representing the fastest-growing segment of the industry as their product has grown well beyond being a luxury item.
But current farming techniques might be limiting the industry's ability to keep up with demand. Government farming quotas—largely aimed at limiting fish disease and pollution from fish farms—cap the output of companies such as SalMar and Marine Harvest AS A, a Norwegian competitor that ranks as the biggest farmer in the world.
Supply constraints have boosted prices at a time when salmon is becoming a common source of protein world-wide. Global salmon consumption is now three times higher than it was in 1980, according to the World Wildlife Fund. That leads to big paydays for farmers, but there is concern the good times may come to an end.
Gunnar Myrebøe, SalMar's platform designer, spent much of his career overseeing development at Norwegian oil giant Statoil AS before turning to aquaculture after learning of the idea of a fish-farming platform. "We had to do something like this, otherwise the industry would never be able to grow," he said
