Santiago, Chile-based fishing and salmon-farming firm Blumar has begun operations at a new salmon plant – five months after a fire completely consumed the company’s Entrevientos plant, which was located in Punta Arenas in the southern Magallanes region.
The plant is meant to fully replace the Entrevientos plant, which was jointly owned by Blumar and fellow salmon-farming firm MultiX. The fire that destroyed the old plant left 760 workers unemployed following the total loss of the facility.
Leased from Australis and conditioned at a cost of CLP 1 billion (USD 1.1 million, EUR 963,000), Blumar’s new plant, which is also in Punta Arenas, in the Magallanes region, will process fresh and frozen fillets and whole salmon with a maximum monthly processing capacity of 3,960 metric tons, representing one-third of the company's total production.
Blumar expects that when fully operable, the new plant will employ 450 workers, many of whom will comprise former employees of the Entrevientos plant, according to Blumar Process Manager Fernanda Taboada, who is overseeing the plant’s launch.
The facility will process fillets and fresh and frozen whole salmon harvested in the Magallanes region, which currently produces a third of the company's total harvested volume.
In June 2024, Blumar celebrated the first year of operations at its Puyehue fish farm, with the farm having produced 1.5 million smolts. Blumar launched the project with the goal of the new farm contributing about 30 percent of the company's smolt requirement of some 4 million fish per year.
“This project is a fundamental milestone in the history of the company because the desire to be present throughout the salmon production chain has been realized since its launch,” Blumar General Manager Gerardo Balbontín said in a statement.
Prior to that, in April, Blumar signed a USD 260 million (EUR 244 million) sustainability-linked syndicated loan, led by Rabobank with the participation of banks DNB, Santander, and BCI. Establishing sustainability goals for 2030 along four main pillars, Blumar will benefit from lower interest rates through the loan, so long as it complies with the objectives of the pillars. The company will have to pay penalties if it fails to meet those goals.
