Scottish salmon farmers set to leap for greater success
The Times
22 June 1987
Carol Ferguson
In many respects, salmon farming is one of Scotland's big success stories.
It took ú60 million of investment both by the private sector and the Highlands and Islands Development Board (HIDB), and more than 10 years of patient work until the late 1970s, before anyone was confident that salmon could be farmed commercially.
Since then growth has been explosive. Scottish farms produced 10,300 tonnes of fresh salmon last year and will produce 15,000 tonnes this year. Norwegian farms produced some 40,000 tonnes last year.
Including the wild salmon catch of some 1,200 tonnes a year, Atlantic salmon accounts for only 52,000 of the 700,000 tonnes of salmon consumed world-wide. The rest is Pacific salmon.
In the early years, several companies went out of business trying to grow salmon in captivity and the presence of two leading companies, Marine Harvest, a subsidiary of Unilever, and McConnell Salmon, a subsidiary of Booker, undoubtedly helped to see the industry through its formative stages.
The industry now employs more than 1,000 full-and part-time employees, usually in remote areas where there is little other work.
"It's a dream come true," says Mr Alastair Alexander of the HIDB, "because it has happened in difficult areas where employment is hard to create. It has been a big investment, but the returns to the growers are reasonably attractive at present."
It remains a risky business, however. Heavy storms will break cages, disease can kill fish or make them inedible and growers still have to cope with random growth factors in the three-to five-year life cycle from the egg to the table.
This year's forecast harvest of 15,000 tonnes will have a value of about ú50 million to ú60 million. Marine Harvest expects to produce 4,000 tonnes valued at ú15 million, and McConnell Salmon 1,400 tonnes valued at ú6 million.
These estimates are based on prices "at the farm gate", which have fluctuated between ú1.50 and ú2.50 a pound since the early 1980s. Last year, a good year for wild salmon, prices weakened by 20 per cent, reaching ú1.50 in the summer. This year, shortages of Norwegian fish due to Hitra disease believed to be caused by very cold water, have created a tight market, and prices have firmed to ú2 a pound.
This translates into shop prices of about ú6 a pound for farmed salmon, still expensive compared with most other fish. Wild salmon commands a premium of about ú3 a pound, although the salmon growers claim that where the two can be distinguished, consumers cannot tell which they prefer.
Indeed, the growers argue that while the best wild salmon is very good indeed, the farmed fish have considerable advantages.
Unlike wild salmon, which is available only from May to September, fresh farmed salmon is available all the year round. In addition, the salmon growers claim that quality is more consistent and is often higher, because fish in captivity can be handled better.
With supplies expected to expand dramatically over the next few years - estimates of 25,000 tonnes by 1988 have been made - a big promotion drive has been under way to encourage the nation's 3,000 fishmongers to stock more salmon. It also aims to educate the public into viewing salmon as an affordable delicacy, but this is likely to be a contradiction in terms, as the experience with chicken demonstrates.
Apart from temporary mismatches in supply and demand, constraints are already appearing that make it most unlikely the market will be saturated with salmon for many years to come.
The most immediate is the pressure on marine sites in Scotland, as not all sites are suitable.
Salmon must have entirely clean water, with a temperature range between 4 degrees and 16 degrees centigrade. And the cages must be in a sheltered location to avoid the worst of the ferocious conditions in the sea lochs.
As McConnell Salmon's Mr David Windmill explained, the parallel with poultry is far from exact. "It is easy to shove up a chicken shed to give a controlled environment, but the fish are still in the sea, a constantly changing environment," he said.
The life cycle of a chicken is short, giving a better cash-flow profile and making selective breeding faster. Salmon spend an average of four years from the egg to the table, so in the 20 years since fish farming has begun, only five generations have been bred in captivity.
But even with newly developed stronger cages, suitable sites will be a continuing problem, especially as environmentalists have raised objections.
Bodies such the Scottish Scenic Trust are concerned about the unsightliness of cages, sea-bed pollution from the salmon, the shooting of predators such as seals and even otters, unsympathetic onshore facilities, and the driving of roads into sensitive areas.
They also complain that the Crown Estates Commissioners, who own the sea-bed, are granting offshore licences that fall outside the planning process, thereby pre-empting the planning approval needed for the onshore facilities, making it difficult for the local authority to turn down applications.
Says Marine Harvest's Mr Angus Morgan: "People have thought that orange-coloured buoys do stand out, but the industry is aware that farms must fit into the environment." He points out that the growers have carried out a study with the professional planners and that in future there will be better landscaping onshore and siting of cages will tend to be along the shore.
He admits that: "Undoubtedly changes occur directly underneath the pen," but adds that "the sea-bed recovers very rapidly."
Careful marketing has ensured that demand has kept pace with supply. Demand has grown by 20 per cent a year for the last three years and is now 14,000 tonnes a year, of which half is Atlantic salmon.
So far, however, the level of market penetration is so low that increasing availability has made little impact on salmon's exclusive image. It has been estimated that in 1982, only 3 per cent of the population had ever tasted fresh Scottish salmon, and at present, fewer than 5 per cent of households in Britain buy salmon.
On that basis, fresh and smoked salmon is likely to keep its luxury image and notwithstanding a drop in real prices, to remain well beyond the purse of many.
Remember the humble herring and its smoked counterpart, the kipper - scorned at dinner parties, but for years one of the main sources of protein for the less well-off?
Overfishing has made the once-abundant herring scarce. And while it would be going too far to suggest that it is about to be promoted into the luxury food class, kippers are now popular as a special treat for breakfast, and have even made it to the dinner table in the form of kipper patÄs.
Chicken, on the other hand, has suffered a reversal in its fortunes. From having been regarded as something of a special occasion dish in the 1950s, perhaps as an alternative to roast beef for Sunday lunch, the advent of battery farming has made chickens cheap, a commodity item.
The question now is whether the arrival of large-scale fish farming could do the same to salmon.
