Salmon Scotland
BY HAMISH MACDONELL
Barriers to growth Professor Griggs’ recommendations could dramatically improve the consent process for marine fish farms
S
COTTISH salmon is booming – that was certainly the message from the annual export figures last month. Produc�on is up, exports are up and prices are star�ng to get back to where they were so everything in the Sco�sh salmon garden is rosy, right? Well, not quite. A key measure of success is not how you are doing against your own previous performance, but how you are doing against your compe�tors and, on this measure, our report card might well read: “Could do be�er”. The global market for salmon is growing at about 8% per year. Scotland used to have a solid 10% share of that market. Now Scotland has a 6.6% share and it is dropping all the �me. Without a decent boost in produc�on, Scotland’s share could slip to 3% or even lower. The reason is simple: salmon farming in Scotland is not growing at the pace of its compe�tors. Sco�sh salmon farming is growing at about 1.4% per year. Norway’s salmon farming sector is growing at three �mes that rate, while salmon farming in Iceland grew by a mighty 35% last year. Why are we sluggish compared with our Scandinavian neighbours? Because the regulatory processes in Scotland make salmon farming a more expensive, cumbersome and bureaucra�c business than elsewhere.
28
Salmon Scotland v2.indd 28
It costs more to grow salmon in Scotland. Crucially, it takes longer to get permissions to farm and all the barriers seem harder to navigate than in other countries. But, at long last, there may be some light at the end of what has been a frustra�ngly long tunnel for our farmers. It has been delivered by a business expert and experienced academic, Professor Russel Griggs OBE. Professor Griggs was tasked by the Sco�sh Government with reviewing the regula�ons governing salmon farming and coming up with something more efficient, speedier and be�er. His report has just been published and it could – if properly and carefully implemented – give our farmers the helping hand they have been so desperate for. One of the biggest problems in fish farm planning has been the four different bodies and five different consents that are needed. We have long argued that we don’t want to do away with any of these, but that there must be a be�er way of dealing with these permissions than going from one body to the next, with each of these bodies having a say on the consent process of all the others. Surely it would be be�er to have a single body in charge and all the relevant regulators feed their views into that one organisa�on. This, a�er all, is how it is done elsewhere and other countries don’t seem to have the problems that we do.
There may be some light at the “ end of what has been a frustra�ngly long tunnel ”
www.fishfarmermagazine.com
07/03/2022 15:35:41
