Fish farming at Loch Awe, Scotland, the location where Mowi is going to move Loch Arkaig's operations.
Photo: Adobe Stock.
2024 was the biggest year of freshwater production for Mowi Scotland ever, however, the Scottish subsidiary of the salmon giant is starting 2025 with not-so-good news: in April it will close one of its oldest freshwater farms, Loch Arkaig.
"Unfortunately we have been unable to agree a lease extension at Loch Arkaig, one of our oldest freshwater sites where Mowi has farmed for more than 35 years," the company explained. "We will cease farming here in April but take forward experience and strong scientific evidence showing that there is no detrimental environmental impact from farming salmon here."
Mowi thus showed the positive side of what has been achieved at this freshwater site during the more than three decades it has been in operation helping the company lead the way in sustainable freshwater loch farming. Contributing to this, it said, has been the large accumulated database that shows how its operations are run sustainably with the freshwater environment.
Loch Arkaig activity will now move to Loch Awe, some 92.5 miles (149 kms approx.) south of its current location. Production will be split between two sites, Tervine and Braevallich, formerly trout farms owned by Dawnfresh Seafoods, which Mowi acquired in February 2023.
These sites will undergo a major overhaul early this year with upgrades towards a more efficient and standardized set-up that will feature 60 m circumference pens (20 at each site), new feeding systems, and improvements to the shore areas to allow for smolt inputs and transfers. The ultimate goal is to produce a combined total of 5 million fish annually.
"We will continue to operate the stocking plan of large vaccinated parr coming into Loch Awe sites, with the hope this will allow us to produce some much larger smolts at ~250g average weight for Loch Etive," the company added.
Moreover, Mowi Scotland assured that all staff will be retained at both sites. "This will be a challenging venture moving from trout to salmon and we expect to have a total of around 19 people working here," the Scotish salmon producer concluded.
