King Salmon hand out

16 comments on “King Salmon hand out ”

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1. Shona 1

   5 April 2012 at 10:58 am

   Having travelled down south a few times over the last 10 or so years it has disturbed me to see how filthy the coastal waters are compared to what I remember from my youth. Nelson harbour , the sounds and to lesser extent inner city beaches in Christchurch . Algae encrusted, soupy and smelly. Far less bird life. Time for a whole bunch of reserves in Marlborough , instead we get vile salmon production. Such crappy inferior seafood anyway. Dyed pink and bloody tasteless gunk.
2. ianmac 2

   5 April 2012 at 11:08 am

   Cunning beggars though. They have tabled THREE large folders of King Salmon information in the Blenheim Public Library. This is to allow the public to “read and analyse and make an informed decision.” Ha! Like Bill English they know that by overloading no ordinary mortal has a hope in hell of reading such a pile of bumf. (In the arms of Librarian Sandra she could just rest her chin on the top folder. At least 3,000 pages!)

   So it comes down to very simple issues.
   Should the Government be allowed to over-ride the District Plan? No!
   Should a natural pristine environment like the Sounds be further eroded for commercial gain? No!
   Should a Commercial Enterprise be gifted $500,000 in order to damage our Sounds? No!
   Should we the People, oppose the pollution of our birthright? Yes!
3. Tom Barker 3

   5 April 2012 at 12:38 pm

   This rort reminds me of a similar deal I’ve read about in the early 20th-cent. tourism industry. One private operator insisted he could run government-owned guesthouses better than their managers, and a private enterprise-oriented government handed them over to him. He soon ran into trouble and came back to his mates in parliament begging for a handout. “If you don’t subsidise me,” he told them, “then the public will no longer believe your line that private enterprise is always more efficient, and that would shoot a hole in your economic policy.” This line was accepted, and the guy was baled out on the quiet.
4. KJT 4

   5 April 2012 at 4:42 pm

   Yet another theft of the “commons” along with asset sales, tax cuts for those who use our resources and don’t want to pay for them, and monorails over Fiordland.
5. Netizen 5

   5 April 2012 at 6:51 pm

   The claims in this post are disingenuous…

   First issue with your post is that the water space that NZKS has is only 5 surface hectares and The Sounds has a surface area of 150,000 hectares. Salmon is pretty much the most space efficient aquaculture operation there is.

   Second issue is that NZKS have never had a problem selling their fish – they can’t grow enough fish to satisfy demand.

   Third issue is that government funding to support economic development like this is made on the basis of a dollar for dollar spent by the company. It’s not an upfront payout that puts a cool half mill in the bank, but a drip feed of reimbursements months after providing evidence of support for the products in markets around the world
   • MrSmith 5.1

     5 April 2012 at 8:34 pm

     First issue: Sorry but Tables in the King Salmon Assessment of Environmental impacts show the proposed structures would cover 204 hectares of the seabed. free land, no rates and not having to treat there waste would account for this industries efficiency, plus mass production which they are trying now.

     Second issue:”Only last month the company had unsold fish in a coolstore in Nelson because of oversupply, chief executive Grant Rosewarne said.”
     “King Salmon achieved the turnaround by upping sales campaigns in New Zealand, the United States, Europe and Japan which quickly closed the gap, he said. This was done with the help of a $500,000 New Zealand Trade and Enterprise grant late last year.” http://www.stuff.co.nz/marlborough-express/news/6624344/Salmon-stocks-depleted-by-sales

     Third issue: in other words a hand out!
     • Netizen 5.1.1

       6 April 2012 at 10:11 am

       Production and sales for NZ King Salmon have grown at a compounding rate of 9% over the last nine years and 13.5% over the last three years.

       NZ King Salmon’s growth is largely being driven by global demand or ‘pull’, rather than product ‘push’. As a result, supply constraints have become an issue. To meet the increased demand for product over the past two years, some fish were harvested early. Twith aided issues with some customers where expectations were not met due to the smaller size of the fish. This was not a sustainable approach and since the first quarter of 2011, NZ King Salmon has been unable to meet current customer demand. The product that was in frozen storage was predominantly smaller fish.

       Proposed structures will not cover 204 hectares of seabed. The salmon farm consents are typically for an area approximately 10-times greater than the area covered by the surface structures alone to allow for mooring systems – you may know these better as anchors. To obtain good holding an anchor is dropped and the mooring veered out so that There is sufficient tension to hold farms in place.

       To illustrate this for you the Te Pangu farm comprises 12, 25x25m and six 30x30m steel sea pens, producing approximately 2,500mt of salmon per annum. This is a third of current total production. Sea floor consents for that farm are around twelve times the surface space occupied by the farm to enable good anchoring. However farming activities do NOT cover the entire sea bed consent area.

       A comment in passing – the New Zealand Salmon industry as a whole does not use chemicals, or anti parasitic treatments in the day to day production. New Zealand salmon farming is unique in this respect – the NZ farms are the cleanest in the world.

       Call the co-funding support whatever you like. It is still a dollar-for-dollar payment. There’s no free ride.
       • RedLogix 5.1.1.1

         6 April 2012 at 10:45 am

         Thanks for the informed comment.

         I agree with you that in the NZ context salmon farming has a fairly modest ecological footprint.
         • Netizen 5.1.1.1.1

           6 April 2012 at 1:26 pm

           Thank you for your feedback – informed debate is good debate!
           • MrSmith 5.1.1.1.1.1

             6 April 2012 at 2:05 pm

             This of-course is the same Redlogix that has a problem with the Chinese buying our farms, but when the government is proposing to give away more free land too a Malaysian company Red starts cheerleading for them. A word beginning with H comes to mind. Looks like nothing more than a cheap shot at me though, so will leave it at that.
       • MrSmith 5.1.1.2

         6 April 2012 at 11:28 am

         So your telling me that this very profitable well managed company made some bad managerial decisions, then went to the government for a hand out.

         We could argue day and night about the size of these farms and there effect as navigational hazards, noise pollution, environmental pollution, visual pollution etc but at the end of the day King salmon are proposing to set up a factory that operates 24/7 in a suburban st, but not in your st . These areas where never zoned for aquaculture, now they are proposing to override the district plan, this is the heart of the matter.

         “the New Zealand Salmon industry as a whole does not use chemicals, or anti parasitic treatments in the day to day production.”

         Yes that may be correct but with the amount of dead fish King salmon have been carting to town lately this may not be the case for long.
         • MrSmith 5.1.1.2.1

           6 April 2012 at 12:37 pm

           This statement is misleading

           “To illustrate this for you the Te Pangu farm comprises 12, 25x25m and six 30x30m steel sea pens, producing approximately 2,500mt of salmon per annum. This is a third of current total production.”

           King salmon operate eight farms at present, listed below, your statement is implying they only need three farms to meet current production.

           Site No. Site Name Location
           1 Waitata Waitata Reach, Pelorus Sound
           2 Kaitira Waitata Reach, Pelorus Sound
           3 Tapipi Waitata Reach, Pelorus Sound
           4 Richmond Waitata Reach, Pelorus Sound
           5 Papatua Pig Bay, Port Gore
           6 Kaitapeha Entrance to Tory Channel from Queen Charlotte Sound
           7 Ruaomoko Entrance to Tory Channel from Queen Charlotte Sound
           8 Ngamahau Tory Channel
           • Netizen 5.1.1.2.1.1

             6 April 2012 at 1:10 pm

             My statement implies nothing. I have simply observed that one farm with a modest surface coverage of 1.3 hectares of fish pens supplies a third of their current annual production.

             If you wish to extrapolate from my comments then you might conclude that three farms of the scale of Te Pangu would be capable of yielding 7,500 tonnes of fish a year. However as you know the other farms are significantly smaller than Te Pangu.

             Also the area of Tahunanui where NZKS wants to expand its existing processing facilities is zoned industrial – while you might choose to characterize the area as suburban, it is nevertheless an industrial area. Neighbors to NZKS include a berry processor, warehouses operated by distributors, Pernod Ricard, a smokehouse and a chilled food company. Nelson’s recycling station is located on the next street over (Pascoe Street) and within 2-5 minutes walk there are other seafood processing factories, timber yards, a mill, stressed concrete manufacturers and other industrial properties, the local ITM building centre, packaging suppliers and Nelson Bays Brewery.

             As to the quality of management decision-making, one swallow doesn’t make a summer; nor does a one-off decision to harvest early type-cast the company as poorly managed. By the company’s own admissions they have learned from that error and have changed their harvesting activities to better reflect market needs.
             • Gilli …

               10 April 2012 at 4:32 am

               @ Netizen; thanks King Salmon PR machine. Another area of their business that has dramatically ramped up production.
6. Rob Ueberfeldt 6

   5 April 2012 at 7:08 pm

   Real aqua-culture is done on land. Doing it out at sea is the quick and dirty way of doing it.
7. Scotty 7

   5 April 2012 at 10:53 pm

   Any dirty noisy industrial fish farms proposed adjacent to Gerry Brownlees’ bach in the Pelorus Sound?
   C’mon Gerry lead by example and offer the space in front of your holiday house to King Salmon! Dare ya

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