Knowledge exchange with Norway
Visit to Valøyan site to view harvest operations
Last month, Mowi Scotland’s David Gray and Ronan Taylor from the Caol Mor farm on Skye visited farms at Valøyan, Tennøya, Mannbruholmen and Grøttingsøy in Norway to get operational training on the use of 160m and 200m pens.
Norway has been using 160m pens since the early 90s, and David and Ronan were the first cohort to go to Norway to learn about the bigger pens in preparation for some sea sites transitioning to bigger pens in the future as Roar Paulsen, Production Director, explains:
“The plan is to send people over to Mowi Norway from up to six of our first sites that will begin to use these bigger pens. The main purpose of the visits and the training is to learn how to operate the pens. We have the advantage that we already have so many learnings from Norway which help us create global best practices.”
David and Ronan spent four days in Norway covering all aspects of farming with bigger pens. They had a tour of the scale operations and looked at everything from moorings, feeding, equipment, cameras, equipment specifications and testing facilities for building pens.
Visit to Tennøya site to view delicing operations
They also witnessed harvesting and delicing operations and, on the final day, David and Ronan set up a 160m pen for loading onto a treatment boat. The skipper of the boat also explained to them all the work carried out by the treatment boat, which includes general pen set up for treatments, mooring work, net checking with remotely operated (underwater) vehicles and pen tows.
Speaking about the visit, David said: “The highlight of the trip for me was spending time on the support boat and learning about all the operations. The knowledge acquired on the trip will be put to use straight away as we already have 160m pens stocked with smolts at Caol Mor.”
Ronan added: “Seeing the equipment they use in Norway, how they prep the pens, load the boat and only treat with wellboats (with inbuilt thermolicers) was very informative.”
