The aquaculture subsidiary of Icelandic fisheries group Samherji has financing in place for the Salmon Garden, a land-based fish farming facility on the Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland.
Funding secured through an equity private placement and a syndicated loan amounts to €235 million and the facility is expected to directly create a hundred new jobs, as well as around the same level of indirect employment via associated services and industries.
‘We are very pleased that the financing for the Salmon Garden has been finalised. The strong participation from domestic and international banks and investors reflects their confidence in the project. From the outset, we set a clear goal of bringing external investors on board, which has now been successfully achieved. We expect land-based fish farming to bring significant value creation to the Icelandic economy,’ said Samherji CEO Thorsteinn Már Baldvinsson.
‘The Salmon Garden is based on our experience from Öxarfjörður in north-east Iceland. We have invested €30 million since 2023 in expanding the site with several pilots, testing new technologies that will be applied in the Salmon Garden. The operational performance has been impressive, validating our expectations for the new site.’
Groundwork for the Salmon Garden began in October 2024. The facility is located on Reykjanes in HS Orka’s Resource Park, with access to 100% renewable energy from the adjacent geothermal power plant.
The facility will be built in three phases, producing approximately 10,000 tonnes of head-on gutted (HOG) salmon annually after the first phase, and reaching a total capacity of 30,000 tonnes per year once fully operational. The production will also generate by-products for further value creation within the Resource Park.
The Salmon Garden project has been in development since 2020 and was designed with the goal of reducing operational complexity and relying exclusively on proven, reliable technologies. Resource efficiency is also at the core, with anticipated low energy consumption and utilisation of seawater and warm heat exchanged seawater from the powerplant, part of which currently flows unused to the sea.
The facility is scheduled to begin operations in the first quarter of 2027.
