With the long-term fate of BC’s salmon farming industry in doubt, a major supplier has cancelled a multi-million-dollar project in Campbell River.
AquaTrans Distributors, which transports fresh fish from the Island to the Lower Mainland and beyond, purchased land in Campbell River in 2022 to build a multi-million dollar depot. Two months later, the federal government announced it would not be renewing licences for farms in the Discovery Islands region.
After last month’s decision by the federal government to phase out all conventional ocean farms by 2029, General Manager Ryan Brush told industry journal Aquaculture North America that there’s no point continuing with the depot project. He says the latest decision makes the company’s business plan to operate year-round economically unviable and will mean a 30 to 40% decline in his company’s business.
Last month the federal government said only closed-containment farms will be allowed on BC’s coast after 2029. However there are currently no large-scale closed-containment salmon farms operating in ocean waters anywhere in the world. A feasibility study by Fisheries and Oceans Canada shows that even the cheapest in-ocean closed-containment systems cost more than four times the cost of a conventional net pen, with a negative return on investment after three years.
Several years ago, before the federal government announced it would be phasing out farms in the Discovery Islands, AquaTrans published a video about its ties to the salmon farming industry, and how it creates jobs on and off the Island. In the video, Brush says losing the BC industry will hurt families in coastal communities.
“What happens to the jobs? What do I tell the 75 families that I employ if they take that away?” he says. “Think of those as dollars that are supporting the Gold Rivers, the Port Hardys, the Saywards, the Campbell Rivers, the Tofinos, and all these beautiful coastal communities that need the support.”
The full video is shared below.
