“We’re beginning to see the results of our long-term focus on managing and understanding production of salmon in RAS. With a significant improvement in terms of technology and biology, affecting fish welfare and survival, we are continuing to improve our freshwater operations step by step.”
Developing and optimising farming practices in freshwater
Our smolt and post-smolt production is dependent on evolving RAS technology, Closed Containment Systems (CCS) as well as traditional and proven flow through systems with reuse of water. It is vital to us to provide all life stages of our salmon with a healthy and sustainable environment safeguarding welfare and production volumes.
Our main focus regarding freshwater technology and the production environment are:
- Upgrade production sites for smolts and post-smolts in Norway
- Update our ONEMowi RAS global standard based on recent learnings and ensure best practices for design and operation of RAS systems
- Validate new RAS systems for water quality and microbiological performance
- Test and contribute to the development of new CCS for post-smolts
- Ensure smooth startup and restart of new and existing RAS systems
- Contribute to development of new smart robotics for tank wall cleaning
- Prevent human error by training and implementing results from innovations and learnings in RAS
- Share key learning points after R&D projects and incidents with the freshwater global technical team
- Pursue constant improvement through R&D, focusing on smoltification, water quality, light regimes and microbiology
In 2024, we strengthen our large-scale production of post-smolts in large marine CCS. First harvest of fish with CCS origin indicates that low mortality and zero lice treatment is achievable. We have developed and validated particle traps and end-of-pipe cleaning systems in the new CCS, comparing the performance of these post-smolts with traditional smolts. Our results showed that CCS can keep sea lice levels below treatment thresholds and that recovery of valuable resources from the discharge is possible.
We use RAS technology to produce more than half of our smolts, applying versions of RAS in all business units except Ireland. Our RAS expertise is based on years of experience and participation in research projects. We are continuously implementing results from several research-projects and we continue to align our staff’s understanding of RAS technology through internal training.
Improved production protocols, together with increased sharing of knowledge and cooperation across business units, avoided mass-mortality incidents in our land-based smolt and post-smolt production in 2024. Land-based biomass production of smolt has almost doubled in Norway since 2019. This volume growth is gained as a result of the post-smolt strategy.
By the end of 2025, Mowi’s post-smolt capacity was close to 40 million, equivalent to a quarter of the smolt produced annually. The post-smolt share in Mowi Norway was approximately 50%, excluding Region North, and around 30% in Mowi Scotland. This will drive higher license utilization and improve biological KPIs through shorter production times at sea, reduced lice treatment needs and increased survival rates. Our 2025 focus was on ensuring the quality and quantity of smolts, monitoring the welfare and performance of post-smolts produced in RAS and CCS, and realize the value generation from post smolt through improved fish health and welfare.
We support external R&D to improve smolt welfare, growth, and survival, ensure stable microbiota in RAS, and find alternative treatments for biosecurity and production protocols. Additionally, we continued to develop SMART farming within freshwater production, such as automatic tank washers, accurate biomass measurement and calculation, and real-time H2S monitoring systems.
