From left: Eyvi chief executive Kjetil Isaksen, Great Northern Salmon chief executive Marianne Naess, and Eyvi's chief business development officer Heidi Kyvik.

Photo: Great Northern Salmon

US salmon farm developer partners with Norway RAS supplier

'Strategic synergies' between Great Northern Salmon and Eyvi became obvious in talks, say companies

Gareth Moore editor

Published 24 April 2025 - 22:25

United States land-based fish farm developer Great Northern Salmon (GNS) has entered a strategic partnership with Norwegian company Eyvi.

The deal makes Eyvi the supplier of the recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) for GNS’s proposed salmon farm at Millinocket in northern Maine and future projects, while GNS will benefit from a significant strategic investment from Eyvi.

“Eyvi has been working to establish a position for expansion into the US, while Great Northern Salmon has worked to strengthen its position with partners and investors with deep land-based expertise. The strategic synergies between the parties here became obvious in dialogues throughout this winter,” the companies said in a press release.

8,000-tonne trout RAS

Eyvi developed Hima’s 8,000-tonne trout farm in Rjukan, Norway, which is set for its first commercial harvest this summer. This is a RAS facility similar in size to GNS’ Millinocket facility under development.

GNS, meanwhile, has established a strong position with a team of industry veterans in Maine. Key permits have been secured, and the company is currently advancing site preparations to lay the foundation for a highly efficient construction process for its 7,500-tonne RAS salmon facility on the bed of a large lagoon that was part of the Great Northern Paper company’s mill.

The companies point out that the GNS management team has extensive experience from various development and permitting processes both in the US and abroad, along with a broad experience in construction and operations, representing a unique asset in a market where local expertise is hard to find.

They add that evidence clearly demonstrates that having a capable, experienced, and well-connected team on the ground is essential for the successful execution of US projects.

The Hima Seafood trout RAS at Rjukan during construction.

Like GNS, the Eyvi team has extensive experience from numerous RAS facilities over the years, including large-scale operations.

“We are impressed by the experience and design thinking at Eyvi,” said Marianne Naess, chief executive of GNS. “Equally important are the synergies we have identified from collaborating on US aquaculture development, and strategic investment from some of Eyvi’s owners into Great Northern Salmon.”

In autumn, this salmon RAS site was under 9 feet of water

Heidi Kyvik, chief business development officer for Eyvi, said: “The attention to detail in harnessing the full potential of RAS salmon production and understanding the US market at Great Northern Salmon has impressed us.

“We see that we have much to offer each other as we develop our regenerative production strategies for trout and salmon in the US market.”

Learning the hard way

If anyone knows the difficulties of building a fish farm in the US, it's Great Northern Salmon CEO and her husband Erik Heim, co-founder of the company. They were previously executives of Nordic Aquafarms Inc. in Belfast, Maine.

Their efforts to build a 33,000-tonnes-per-year RAS salmon facility won the backing of the local council but were bogged down by a group of opponents who disputed Nordic’s ownership of a strip of foreshore that had to be crossed by the projects water input and discharge pipes.

Naess and Heim parted company with Nordic in 2022, with the issue still unresolved, and formed a new company, Xcelerate Aqua, to build smaller RAS facilities at more suitable sites. The GNS project at Millinocket is the first project. In contrast to Belfast, there have been no objections to the fish farm.

Nordic has abandoned its plan for Belfast after a court ruling went against it and sold the land to the opposition group Upstream Watch. It is instead concentrating on a project for a yellowtail kingfish RAS on the Humboldt Peninsula in northern California.