Lumpfish farm planned in Svínoy

The planned lumpfish farm in Svínoy is expected to create five or six new jobs on the island.

“Initially, the plan is to farm a million lumpfish,” says Sjúrður Jacobsen, who has been given permission to farm lumpfish on land.

When Bakkafrost terminated its salmon-farming activities in Svínoy some two years ago due to space restrictions, Jacobsen started thinking about farming lumpfish in the old smolt farm came back to life.

Lumpfish is a small fish that eats salmon lice, and Jacobsen is confident that there is a market for lumpfish in the Faroes.

Upgrades are needed to make the old smolt farm suitable for lumpfish farming. The main investment will be a new pump system. Jacobsen believes a total investment of DKK 2-3 million should be enough to get started.

Up to now, Jacobsen has been working on his lumpfish-farming plan on his own. But now he is looking to finalise deals with investors.

“We should be ready to start our activities in the autumn, and we expect the first fry to be ready for release by the end of the year,” he says.

Sjúrður Jacobsen is the son of Bjarni Jacobsen, who built the Svínoy smolt farm in the 1980s.

“I feel it’s a calling for me to get the old smolt farm up and running again. It was, and still is, by far the biggest private investment ever made in an outlying island in the Faroes.”

Translated by prosa.fo