Rolls-Royce to moor world’s first offshore fish farm

JUNE 22, 2016 —Rolls-Royce has signed a contract for the construction and delivery of an eight point mooring system to the world’s first offshore fish farm installation being developed for Ocean Farming AS, a subsidiary of the SalMar Group in Norway.

The equipment will be used to secure the installation to the seabed at Frohavet, off the coast of central Norway.

The 68 meter high semi-submersible rig will have a diameter of 110 meters and a volume of 250,000 cubic meters. It is being built at the Qingdao Wuchuan Heavy Industry Co. shipyard in China with delivery expected in third quarter 2017.

SalMar is one of the world’s largest producers of farmed salmon. The growth of the aquaculture industry means that new locations, offering good biological conditions for fish stocks, are being explored in deeper water. However moving further offshore also requires new technology.

Asbjørn Skaro, Rolls-Royce, Executive Vice President – Deck Machinery, said: “This contract win shows how years of experience providing sophisticated mooring and deck machinery solutions in some of the world’s most difficult sea conditions can be applied in other areas of the maritime economy today and for the future. The technical solutions for SalMar’s pilot installation is based on the state-of-the-art technology Norwegian industry has to offer from both fields of aquaculture and offshore oil and gas.”

The eight point mooring system to be delivered by Rolls-Royce includes monitoring, fairleads, connectors and subsea load sensing system.