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LOCHABER is in line for a major jobs boost after it emerged that salmon farmers Marine Harvest are planning a major expansion of their hatchery operations at Lochailort.
Planning permission could be lodged as early as next month and, if approved, the new plant would require a staff of six.
The company already operates four other freshwater hatcheries at Loch Garry, Loch Arkaig, Loch Lochy and Loch Sheil.
Combined with Lochailort they produce around 10 million salmon fry and smolts annually for MH’s sea loch farms on the west coast. The new Lochailort hatchery will be capable of producing an additional five
million smolts, effectively increasing production by half.
The extra capacity will be needed to supply young fish to four huge open-sea farms Marine Harvest is planning to develop in 2012.
Each farm, to be sited in locations with deep water and strong currents, would be able to hold 5,000 tonnes of live salmon - twice the limit allowed for sea lochs.
Tests on locations in and around the southern Minch and the Small Isles are well advanced.
Marine Harvest business support manager Steve Bracken told FISHupdate.com the new £12 million facility will replace the existing smolt unit which has been in place for 16 years, taking in the surrounding buildings and extending into part of the unused field to
the south.
The proposals, aired at a drop in session at the Lochailort smolt unit on September 28, had been ‘generally well received’, Mr Bracken said. ‘We had the local community come along and had in excess of 20 people there. Overall I think the reaction was positive, but clearly we are at a very early stage of the application,’ he said.
‘The whole point of the drop in session was to get local feedback so that we can decide how to take the application forward. We are going to meet with Arisaig Community Council later this month at their
monthly meeting.’
‘We are looking at six new jobs. We have had a hatchery at Lochailort for 16 years and this will create the larger hatchery that will be able to supply smolts the new sites we are hoping to establish in the Minch and Inner Hebrides.’
Mr Bracken added that going back to Lochailort will feel like ‘a homecoming’ for the company.
‘I think it’s an appropriate place to have it – going back to the heartland if you will. We’re all very excited about it,’ he said. Local councillor Allan Henderson said: ‘If this is true I would be absolutely delighted. Lochailort was where Marine Harvest started back in the 1970s and if this proposal solidifies it would be a big boost for employment prospects it a remote rural area like Lochailort.’
If the project gets the go-ahead work will start on site in spring 2011. Marine Harvest can trace its roots at Lochailort back to 1965, when Unilever opened an experimental fish farm and research base there.
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