Opnun nýs hrognahúss hjá Benchmark Genetics

Dear guests!

Thank you Jónas for your invitation for me to speak a few words here today. As we have heard, the new incubation center here in Vogar will be the largest such facility worldwide.

I am not sure that it is well understood how large this new facility is. Each year traditional Icelandic fisheries catch around 1,5 million tons of wild fish. This catch is integral to our economy and supplies around a fifth of Iceland’s export earnings. As I understand it, this new facility will be able to produce around 300-400 million smolts per year, from which will grow around 1 million tons of salmon. That is remarkable, that from this facility here in Vogar will come the smolts to grow a million tons of food.

It is a testament to the ambition and drive by the founders of Stofnfisk that 31 years after the founding of the company it is an integral part in a worldwide knowledge-based industry. We all know that the world yearns for more food and if aquaculture is done correctly, it can be a source of high-quality nutrients with remarkable efficiency. Companies such as Benchmark, in cooperation with scientists at the University of Iceland and international collaborators are working towards making the next generation of salmon even more efficient. More healthy and therefore better able to turn feed into high quality food.

I visited the facility earlier this year and it became clear to me how important it is for Iceland’s growing aquaculture to have a strong foundation of knowledge on the breeding and raising of smolt. The unique resources around Vogar, ample supply of cold water and warm sea makes the facility a very good spot for incubating smolt.

The investment made here is a prime example of the sort of service industry we want to see grow around aquaculture in Iceland. Something that leverages Iceland’s human capital and natural resources for value creation. It also shows how important it is for business as well as consumers to have trustworthy biosecurity measures. The cooperation between the Directorate of Food, MAST and Benchmark has for years been able to show the production here to be healthy and therefore more suitable for many buyers.

Dear guests. Iceland is a food producer. Traditionally we have been known for our cod, herring, and other species of wild caught fish. There are however inherent limitations to how much fish we can catch from the wild without endangering the stocks. Aquaculture has the potential to breed its fish and make it more efficient year after year, better at turning feed into food so we get more for less. That is a productivity gain that benefits everyone, from the perspective of resource use, getting more for less is inherently green. While for the consumers, a lower price for food is important in a world that craves ever more food.