Norwegian fish farming companies experience best financial year so far

Photo: Nova Sea Helgeland

Nova Sea in Helgeland gave its employees a total of 50 million kroner in bonus last year. Each employee received the same amount. “ I’m very happy. I’ve never had so much bonus before”, says Hedvig Rønning Oddøy. The same goes for Camilla Oddøy, who says that the bonus is enough for her to travel this year.

Both employees were positively surprised by the bonus of 200.000 kroner they received last year. All 250 employees received this bonus after a very productive and good year. The production volume of 37,000 tons of salmon is slightly down, but good prices has nevertheless resulted in record profit of over one billion kroner.

On average, each employee received a bonus 202.000 kroner. The management of Nova Sea treats all employees equally, regardless of whether one is a manager or gutting fish at the slaughterhouse, says NRK.

A new record

The total revenue of the company in 2016 was 2.56 billion kroners, a solid increase of 750 million from the previous year, writes Rana Blad. CEO Odd Strøm has every reason to be satisfied. “We have allocated 50 million kroners of the profit as bonus for the employees. The employees have already received the money, and they are very happy with it.”

In 2015, NRK wrote that the company had its best financial year so far. Employees received a bonus of 100.000 that year. In 2016, the company divided a bonus of 30 million kroners among its employees.

Similar arrangements at other fish farming companies

Last year, the company iLakt created a list of Norways 20 largest fish farming companies. NRK is currently researching if other fish farming companies have had similar revenues. The companies that have yet responded to NRK have the same story: 2016 was a very good year and many want to share this with their staff.

Norway exported salmon for 61.4 billion kroner in 2016, an increase of 29 percent or 13.8 billion. Analyst Paul T. Aandahl of the Norwegian Seafood Council explains that the reason for this increase is the record-high prices, a trend that has followed through in 2017. “In the first two months we have seen prices 23 percent higher than the same period last year. 2017 starts thus very good, and it will likely be another good year for the industry”.

Source: NRK / Norway Today