First Water produced around 700 metric tons (MT) of Atlantic salmon at its flowthrough land-based farm in Thorlakshofn, Iceland, in 2023, and that total will more than double in 2024.
The company, founded as Landeldi in 2017, completed its first harvest of 50,000 Atlantic salmon weighing an average of 3 kilograms in June 2023. It is on target to harvest 1,500 MT of 5-kilo salmon in 2024, according to CEO Eggert Kristofersson.
“We are getting there, slowly,” Kristofersson told SeafoodSource at the 2024 Seafood Expo Global in Barcelona, Spain.
First Water has raised EUR 123 million (USD 133.7 million) – enough to complete the second of six phases, which will eventually grow its annual production capacity to 50,000 MT. It is now tapping into that funding to build a new processing plant and a second hatchery, Kristofersson said.
“Even though interest rates are high, we successfully completed our fundraiser in 2023,” Kristofersson said. “It was tough, but I think investors see the possibility of what we can do with salmon farming in Iceland.”
As its name suggests, First Water touts its water quality as its differentiator.
“We are doing things differently, as we source our seawater by drilling through lava, so we're getting purified seawater via natural filtration,” Kristofersson said. “It also gives us a very stable water temperature of 7 to 9 degrees [Celsius] all year round. We have also had fish for two years in our [farm], and we have no diseases and no sea lice, so we don't use any chemicals or medicine.”
Kristófersson said Landeldi now has 1.75 million salmon in its fry and rearing facilities, and the next harvest is scheduled in August.
"Land farming of salmon is inherently an innovative project and we still have a long way to go in the learning curve, but this extremely successful first harvest and positive customer feedback confirm that we are on the right track,” Kristófersson said. “We are relentlessly continuing the development of environmentally friendly and sustainable salmon farming on land."