March 30, 2022

Partnership in Switzerland expected to push domestic production of land-based Atlantic salmon

A strategic partnership between Swiss Blue Salmon and Billund Aquaculture will jumpstart production of sustainable, land-based Atlantic salmon and spur the development of Switzerland's aquaculture sector.

Switzerland imports about 98% of the fish it consumes. This arrives by land or by air, which significantly increases the carbon footprint of seafood consumption in the country.

Swiss Blue Salmon and Billund Aquaculture recently entered into a strategic partnership to build the smartest recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) farm in the world in the department of Glarus, which could replace up to 8% of salmon imported into the country.

The innovative land-based salmon farm will feature the use of state-of-the-art RAS and cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud solutions, digitalisation and automatisation.Sune Moeller, chief technology officer at Swiss Blue Salmon, described it as an innovation wheel.

"From the fish farmer's point of view, we create a lot of data that gets uploaded to a cloud-based platform and, from there, we can share all raw data with strategic partners like Billund," Moeller said. "In turn, Billund will be able to analyse that data and come up with new ideas and solutions, to make sure that both stay on the forefront of their industries."

The founder and chief executive officer of Swiss Blue Salmon, Rudolf Ryf, commented that one of his original motivations for creating this company was to address the seafood trade deficit in Switzerland, where almost all fish is imported. "We have good quality water sources in the country and I see an opportunity to build up a Swiss aquaculture industry and reduce the import levels from 98%," he said.

Furthermore, Swiss Blue Salmon wants to strengthen ties with local universities, contributing to knowledge creation and the hiring of specialists for this project and its future farming operation.

Moeller added that by producing locally, "it gives us a unique opportunity to sell sushi grade fish to local Swiss restaurants, which will be able to serve fish to their customers merely hours after them being harvested at the farm."

Bjarne Hald Olsen, chief operating officer and business and development manager at Billund Aquaculture, said: "…we are very pleased to enter this strategic partnership with Swiss Blue Salmon. It represents a significant step forward towards the creation of a sustainable Swiss aquaculture industry."

- The Fish Site