ESTONIA
PRFoods is Estonia’s sole farmer of trout in the sea
A quest to expand Baltic Sea farming operations The aquaculture sector in Estonia is modest with a production of about 1,000 tonnes in 2018. In comparison, Latvia produced about 800 tonnes and Lithuania some 3,500 tonnes. Rainbow trout is the main species farmed in Estonia and among the companies cultivating it is PRFoods, which specialises in the production, processing, and sales of fish, primarily rainbow trout.
Cages are used to on-grow rainbow trout in the Baltic Sea. The fish are introduced into the cages at about 700 g on average and reach 3-4 kg some six months later.
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RFoods has fish farming activities in Sweden and Finland, as well as processing facilities in Estonia, Finland, and the UK. While the company only produces rainbow trout, its processing and trading activities also include salmon, sourced mainly from Norway. The total annual
production of rainbow trout amounts to about 2,000 tonnes of which Estonia supplies some 200 tonnes. The rest is grown in freshwater lakes in Sweden and in the Baltic Sea in Finland. Explaining the focus on rainbow trout, Margus Rebane, the director with overall responsibility for farming activities,
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says that it is the most successful fish the company has farmed. Other species have been tried in the past, but their performance was not as good as rainbow trout’s. Production in Estonia is currently only a small fraction of the total, but the company plans to increase it and has applied for several permits. I
hope that in 2022 we can start a bigger production in Estonia, says Mr Rebane. The current farming site is off Saaremaan, the largest Estonian island, and in contrast to the Finnish sites, it is very exposed with clear passage right up to the Bothnian Bay in the north. The sites in Finland are located within
