HIGHLIGHTS FROM MOWI FRESHWATER IN 2024

Highlights from Mowi freshwater in 2024.  2024 was the biggest year of freshwater production for Mowi Scotland ever. A total of 22.5 million smolts were put to sea at Mowi farms, Wester Ross and some third-party farms.

This is a huge logistical challenge with 38 million fish transported by road and 11 million fish delivered to sea from the end of September right up until Christmas.

The freshwater team responsible for coordinating this effort has done a phenomenal job, optimising transfer days and maintaining smolt quality. A special thanks to Archie and Bobby who kept this moving along.

Freshwater also saw its lowest biological FCR results (0.98), continuing a trend of reduction that has improved dramatically over the past three years.

Hatcheries

The reason for this successful year lies in significant improvements made to Mowi’s hatcheries including major chilling system overhauls at both Lochailort and Inchmore, as well as delivering on two critical elements of water quality: dilution and reduced CO2.

The Inchmore team has done an exceptional job improving water quality with an 86% reduction in nitrate and a 60% reduction in dissolved CO2 levels.

Lochailort has long been a symbol of success in terms of our global freshwater operations and is set to reach a milestone of 100 million smolts later this year.

At Inverpolly, we are investing heavily and installing disc-filtration systems, additional rearing tanks and some water sterilisation technologies to secure organic production. Main site works should be completed by April.

The hatchery teams and managers have some of the greatest responsibilities in the company often looking after over 40% of all the fish destined to be stocked at any given point in the year. This requires high degrees of competence, dedication and attention to detail. The teams continually go over and above to ensure fish remain in peak condition and we wouldn’t be in the same position without their passion and focus.

Freshwater farms

The teams at Mowi’s freshwater lochs are often the unsung heroes in freshwater. Exposed to the elements and caring for salmon during smoltification, the most challenging biological period of a salmon’s lifecycle.

All staff working at our freshwater farms have done an amazing job and special mentions must go to:

• Sandy MacKinnon from Loch Lochy who was nominated for Fish Farmer of the Year in 2024. He has shown a great focus on fish quality and led on freshwater health and safety standards. The team at Lochy have had a challenging 2024, but really made it happen and got great results.
• Scott MacLean from Glenfinnan took on the role of farm manager having previously been an Assistant Manager at Loch Arkaig. Scott has galvanised the team and delivered fantastic results with a good focus on teamwork and organisation.
• Peter Walker and the whole Loch Ness team who have worked for long periods of time with a staff deficit, some challenging biology and of course based at our most exposed site. They also performed a valuable role improving our engineering resource in the fallow period that allowed us to improve Inchmore considerably in the early part of 2024.
• Teams from Loch Garry/Arkaig who have experienced some of the most challenging staffing and fish-logistical challenges of 2024. Neil MacDonald, who managed both sites, and his team have worked tirelessly to ensure all deadlines were met, including vaccinations, transport and several changes to production. Seeing the development potential in Scott MacLean, he also facilitated his move to Glenfinnan which is a great example of the talent in our freshwater team.
• Finally, we can’t forget the fantastic job of our engineering team keeping us moving. A lot of dedication goes in here working around the clock. We hope to see a big shift in how we do maintenance in 2025 as Roger Mount has been working very hard to digitise our systems and get us running on EAM. This has been no small task and he is working tirelessly to improve the way the team will function in the future.

Health

2024 was challenging for all salmon producers, however, Mowi’s systems and approaches in freshwater meant that we were able to mitigate the impact from these biological challenges.

Vaccines

2024 saw a further rollout of vaccines developed together with the health team in Scotland, including Yersinia and Pasteurella vaccines. In addition, Mowi aims to have a new vaccine containing Moritella ready for deployment in May 2025.

Egg biology

We were successful in using a much higher percentage of eggs from Mowi sources in 2024, sourced from Ireland and Scotland. This led to much better batch consistency than previous years and better genetics for seawater sites. This blueprint should continue when our broodstock project starts at Ardessie.

Diet

Our teams have spent the last part of 2024 focussing on the impacts of diet on several freshwater health issues, including saprolegnia, with some really positive results. This is something we aim to continue into 2025 as we aim to improve robustness and welfare in our stocks.

Loch Arkaig/Loch Awe

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.

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 has led the way in sustainable freshwater loch farming; amassing a large database showing how our operations are run sustainably with the freshwater environment.

We look forward to moving to two new production sites at Tervine and Braevallich, formerly Dawnfresh sites in Loch Awe. Here, the aim is to produce a combined 5 million fish annually.

These sites will be undergoing a major overhaul early this year with upgrades to a more efficient and standardised set-up featuring 60m circumference pens (20 at each site), new feed systems and upgrades to the shore areas to allow for smolt inputs and transfers.

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.

All staff will be retained at both sites as this will be a challenging venture moving from trout to salmon and we expect to have a total of around 19 people working here.