Atlantic Sapphire Q1 average harvest weight was lower than first stated
The Florida salmon farmer has corrected an error in its previous operational update, where the average weight from March was given as the average for the entire first quarter
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Atlantic Sapphire, which operates land-based salmon farming just outside Miami, Florida, mistakenly reported an overly high average harvest weight for the first quarter of the year.
The company discovered that in a previously reported trading update for Q1 2025, it had mistakenly stated the average harvest size from March as the average harvest weight for the entire quarter.
The average harvest weight increased throughout the quarter, with 2.2 kg head on gutted in January, 2.8 kg HOG in February and 3.1 kg HOG in March. The average harvest weight for the first quarter thus ended up being 2.6 kg HOG, not 3.1 kg HOG.
It is still an increase from the fourth quarter of 2024 when it was 2.4 kg HOG.
Changed biomass strategy
Atlantic Sapphire has struggled with production problems and red numbers for years, despite major investments.
Last summer, former Cermaq executives Pedro Courard and Gunnar V. Aasbø-Skinderhaug joined the company as chief executive and chief financial officer, respectively.
During the presentation of the 2024 annual report, Courard said that the new management's main focus after taking over was to increase the average weight of the fish they produced.
The CEO explained that the main reason why HOG increased from 2.2 kg at the beginning of the year to 3.1 kg in March was that they completed the biomass adjustments in January.
"3.1 kg is the lowest average weight we want going forward and we expect the size to continue to increase."
Reduced number of fish
During the North Atlantic Seafood Forum in Bergen, Norway, in March, Courard said that Atlantic Sapphire had had too many fish in relation to the feeding capacity. The average harvest weight was then 1.4 kg.
"We are now in a period where we will reach larger harvest weights, so that we can achieve better sales prices, and then scale up production to 8,000 tonnes," said the CEO.
The change in strategy has, among other things, resulted in a reduction in the number of fish per batch.
The company has announced that it will be in deficit this year as well, and is planning a capital raising in the second half of 2025 to resume construction of phase 2 of the facility. When completed, the annual production capacity will be 25,000 tonnes of salmon.
