The company was co-founded by OddGeir Oddsen and Andrew Robertson who met courtesy of an introduction by the then CEO of the Atlantic Salmon Trust, Tony Andrews.
At the meeting held at Edinburgh airport we discussed the work being carried out by the Freshwater Institute out in West Virginia, USA, and their use of Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) technology to rear Atlantic Salmon from egg through to market size of around 5kgs. It was subsequently agreed that together we would head out there and get a feel for what the commercial opportunity might look like.
It has to be said that OddGeir had for some time been looking at various technologies in his capacity as CEO of Lighthouse of Caledonia (ultimately the Scottish Salmon Company) for ways to increase the company’s biomass production without the biological challenges of sea cage production and the attendant lengthy, stringent planning processes required to develop more sites. Having raised initial funding from friends and family we set about pulling a business plan and production model together as well as locating a suitable site to develop.
After a couple of years, we had managed to travel extensively looking at various RAS technologies and had succeeded in not only finding an 18 acre site but getting full planning consent to build a 20,000m2 RAS facility adjacent to Gigha on the Kintyre Peninsula just north of Tayinloan. We are now looking to raise capital to build Phase 1, a proof of concept 2-tank model that will grow 2 generations of salmon producing 50 tonnes in total. This will become the blueprint for our scaled up project with proven data showing all the component parts required are commercially viable.