Following the divestments carried out last year, Grieg Seafood has put its operational focus on Rogaland and post-smolt.
Photo: Grieg Seafood.
Grieg Seafood presented its Q1 2026 trading update. In its first quarter focused solely on operations in Rogaland, Norway, after completing the sale of its Finnmark and Canada businesses to Cermaq, the company reported a difficult start to the year, after experiencing delousing issues.
Specifically, Grieg Seafood's harvest volume for the first quarter of 2026 was approximately 8,200 gutted weight tons (GWT). Compared to the 7,400 GWT harvested last year at its Rogaland operations—the total harvest in Q1 2025 was 20,800 GWT—this represents a year-on-year increase of 10.81%.
However, despite these total figures, which also exceeded Bloomberg's consensus estimate for the quarter of approximately 6,714 tons, the company warned that the quality problems recorded during the quarter will negatively affect EBITD.
In its statement to the stock exchange, Grieg explained that, following a second half of 2025 with high seawater temperatures, it experienced high sea lice pressure which led to a decrease in the survival rate.
To address the situation, the company initiated mechanical delousing treatment during the period, a decision that was made ahead of the arrival of another unexpected period of prolongedly cold seawater temperatures in the first quarter of 2026.
The combination of a warm summer, mechanical treatment against sea lice, and that subsequent prolonged cold period affected the quality of the harvested fish, and consequently, the proportion of superior quality fell to 60%.
Thus, in addition to higher harvest volumes with elevated farming costs, the direct consequence of this decline in quality was lower price realization. Grieg reported that the total estimated impact on EBIT for 2026 is in the range of NOK 50 to 75 million.
Nevertheless, the Norwegian salmon aquaculture company said that it expects most of the impact to be recognized in the first quarter of 2026, with only limited effects anticipated for the remainder of the year.
Grieg, which had closed 2025 highlighting positive farming performance in Rogaland, now said that the incident does not reflect the region's historically strong performance and is largely considered an isolated event. It added that the average number of treatments per post-smolt group remains below one (even with increased treatment activity).
"This outcome is not satisfactory, and decisive actions have been implemented to avoid similar situations in the future, among other, the respective mechanical treatment has been discontinued," the company's stock exchange statement read.
Finally, Grieg emphasized that the majority of fish currently at sea and scheduled for harvest in 2026 have not undergone this delousing treatment.
Grieg Seafood's expanded first quarter 2026 results report, which will detail the final impact of the recorded quality issues on EBITD, will be published around May 21, 2026.