Chilean Salmon Farming on the Horizon of Sustainability: Review of the Development of a Highly Intensive Production, the ISA Crisis and Implemented Actions to Reconstruct a More Sustainable Aquaculture Industry - Aquaculture and the Environment: A Shared Destiny - page 217

technological bridge and providing services that helped the development of the salmon
industry (Bluth et al., 2003).
2.1 Emergence of industrial aquaculture
The emergence of foreign companies in the salmon-farming business stimulated interest
among local investors and firms in the commercial viability of the industry. Some of the first
enterprises were founded by biologists, veterinarians and marine biologist experts. They had
acquired substantial experience and knowhow regarding fish farming management of foreign
species and production of fish eggs (Norambuena & González, 2006). In the late 1980s, Chile
officially entered the group of salmon and trout producing countries and a number of local
salmon farming companies increased and production grew tremendously. In 1985, 36 salmon
farms were operating in Chile and the production reached near 1,200 tonnes increasing up to
60,000 tonnes by 1991 (Bjørndal, 2002). Thus, the industry grew in technology focused to
farming, feed and fish processing. In the early stages, the production of salmonid in fresh and
seawater has been centred in Los Lagos region. However, in the last 20 years, the development
of connectivity, fish handling and transport technologies lead to a wide spread in egg, fry, parr
and smolt production up north to Valparaíso region (V), and also fresh and seawater
production further south to Magallanes region (XII), see Figure 1.
2.2 Structure and organization of the industry
The salmon industry emerged as a mature cluster, with several companies undertaking
different aspects of salmon production and marketing. In Chile there has been a strong
tendency towards vertical integration in the production of salmonids from egg production
to market. Even minor producers will process, market and export their own production.
Furthermore, it is common for farmers to have two or three salmon species, in order to
spread the risk, both on more species and on more markets. This also contributes to
smoother harvesting patterns and consequently cash flow, throughout the year. Large
companies have moved to vertical integration in order to reduce production costs,
implementing egg production, feeds and processing plants within their business (Iizuka,
2004; Norambuena & González, 2006).
Interestingly some farming companies are now producing most of their feed in-house or are
part of holding-groups, thus part of the feed is addressed to the fish farmers within the
holding. The Chilean industry has organized merges differently from that seen in the
European salmon industry. After merging process towards larger enterprises, the original
smaller companies were not integrated completely. Hence, they have changed the
ownership and some restructuring, but kept most of the structure in each daughter
companies and the original names.
The number of companies controlling most of the salmonid production in Chile has
decreased from 35 to 10 companies between 1997 and 2006. However, today 19 companies
contribute with more than 80% of the production of salmonids (Table 2).
More than 60% of the employment in the salmon industry is within processing and value
added production today. About 90% of the Atlantic salmon production and 30% of Coho
salmon and rainbow trout production is processed in the country. The main centres for
processing salmonids are in the southern regions around Puerto Montt and Quellón area.