A September 16 salmonbusiness.com article quotes Nordic Aquafarms as saying: “Nordic Aquafarms has made tremendous progress the last years and is entering into a very exciting period with start of construction of our Maine project, permitting in California, and increased production of salmon in Norway and of yellowtail kingfish in Denmark.”

There's only problem. It's untrue. 

Nordic hasn't started construction in Maine. It still needs permits from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection/Board of Environmental Protection, the Belfast Planning Board and the Army Corps of Engineers. But that hasn't stopped Nordic from sending out press releases suggesting it has in fact received a DEP/BEP permit.

And tremendous progress? Let's look. 

Almost three years into Belfast, Nordic has none of the above-mentioned permits. When Nordic publicly announced its Belfast plans in February 2018, it said it hoped to have its permits by November 2018. To review, it's now September 2020.  

Meanwhile, back in its hometown of Fredrikstad, Norway, Nordic sued Graakjaer, the builder of its Fredrikstad industrial fish farm, for failing to adequately assess the construction site's soil. But Graakjaer countersued and won an award of more than $4 million; the case is now on appeal. Nordic's apparent incompetence has resulted in its buildings sinking into the ground and has apparently forced Nordic to abandon commercial production in favor of face-saving and investor-soothing “research and training.”

Also in Fredrikstad, Nordic ineptly placed big fans facing a residential neighborhood, instead of facing the inside of its industrial park, causing plant neighbors to band together to fight Nordic over steady violation of local noise ordinances.

Meanwhile Nordic's motion to dismiss a lawsuit over ownership of intertidal lands it needs in Belfast failed. And even if Nordic get its Belfast permits, at least some of them will be appealed, thus prolonging Nordic's slow financial bleed-out. Nordic lawyers filed a thousand pages with the BEP, at hundreds of dollars an hour – do the math.

At a February 11, 2020 BEP hearing, Nordic said it had only $8 million on hand - that's less than two percent of the $500 million Nordic needs to build in Belfast and California.

And finally, from mid-June to mid-July European prices for farm salmon plunged 43 percent. Even if prices recover, such volatility would give pause to any sane would-be investor.

If all that is tremendous progress, I'll take abject ruin any day.

Lawrence Reichard lives in Belfast