Nova Sea joins the companies that a few days before the end of 2022 opened new subsidiaries to transfer their concessions before the new Norwegian salmon tax came into force on January 1, 2023. As other companies such as Mowi, Cermaq, Lerøy, Grieg Seafood, or Norlaks have done, the company based in Lovund, Northern Norway, has also created a new company. Nova Sea Havbruk was born as a result of the new salmon tax.
"Like most of the aquaculture industry we have transferred our concessions to a new company, called Nova Sea Havbruk AS", confirmed to WeAreAquaculture Trud Berg, Head of Communication at Nova Sea. In its consultation response to the proposed tax on ground rent in aquaculture in Norway, the company already said that it can contribute more money to the community but not with the system proposed by the government.
In that response, Nova Sea also said it preferred that the tax be introduced in 2024 and that the spring of 2023 is used to thoroughly review how to set it up. However, as Berg recalled in her statements to WeAreAquaculture, while it is not known how it will ultimately be articulated, the tax is already in place.
"We do not know what the resource tax will look like in the future, but we know it will be implemented for the value chain related to sea farming, and that we have to pay the tax already from the 1st of January 2023", she said.
"How the new tax at the end of the day will be, will be decided by our national parliament close to summer 2023. This gap between implementing the new resource tax, and deciding what it actually will look like, is challenging to us. To try to ensure that we pay the right resource tax in the future, we have made this small reorganization which enables us to set the right value for this part of the value chain", concluded Nova Sea's Head of Communication.
This reorganization is one more of the consequences that the tax has already had on the company after the Government's announcement. Previously, Nova Sea had already frozen NOK 3 300 million in investments, in addition to announcing that it will not renew 18 plant contracts, and will postpone indefinitely 100 direct and indirect jobs.
