From Egg to Table: A Look Inside Chile's Salmon Industry

In the first week of June, I (Alex Golub, Sustainability Director) traveled to Chile with a few of my colleagues who work on Acme's food safety and quality teams: Matt (Vice President of Technical Services), Mary (Senior QA Corporate Manager), Kalley (Technical Services Systems Data Specialist), and Susie (Manager of Quality and Process Excellence). The highlight of the trip was a full egg-to-table tour of the farmed Atlantic salmon industry in Southern Chile, organized by Franco (CEO of Acme Chile). Here's a recap of each step of the process that we observed.

Hatchery 

From Fresh Water

To begin the journey, we visited a hatchery, one of the largest smolt suppliers in Chile. After gearing up with all of our PPE and walking through several sterilizing boot baths, we first entered a dark room filled with racks containing trays of tiny orange globes - salmon eggs. The eggs turn into alevin with the combination of time and water temperature. They're moved to freshwater tanks and begin feeding at 8-10 weeks old, during the fry stage. They'll stay in these tanks for about a year until they're ready to smolt. 

We visited a unique facility because it operates a post-smolt system. Usually after smoltification, hatcheries release the salmon into the sea pens to grow out for the remaining 16 months of their lives, until they reach 5kg. Due to a variety of factors, including the proclivity of bacterial disease and sea lice in the farm pens, the smolts live in contained environments for as long as they can, to reduce the amount of time and exposure the adult salmon have to the external, dangerous conditions. 

Farm

Salmon in Chile are grown in floating net pens that are anchored to the sea floor. In Chile, the pens are rectangular, with large nets underwater to prevent marine mammals such as sea lions from approaching the fish, and nets above the pens to prevent birds. We visited a farm close to shore in between the mainland of Chile and Chiloe Island, where there is a strong current. We walked down steep steps to a beach and took a boat out 5 minutes to the farm. Most salmon farms are located in much more remote areas that can only be accessed by boats. For the most remote farms, employees live on barges anchored near the farms for up to months at a time in order to provide the maintenance and support needed for the salmon farm. 

Government regulation dictates the monitoring and testing of the sea floor underneath the farm site to ensure that the habitat is healthy. Between grow-out cycles, farm sites are required to be fallowed to allow the sea floor and water column under the site to recover and re-oxygenate. 

The fish are fed by robots that shoot pellets in a spiral at regular intervals. These feeding robots are controlled by a remote team based in an office in Puerto Montt. The remote team uses the many cameras located in the fish pens to determine how much and at what rate the feed is being consumed by the fish. Feed is expensive, so the farms do not want to waste food that floats to the bottom of the cages. However, if the fish continue to eat, they want to keep feeding them so that the salmon grow as quickly as possible. The most important variables for healthy salmon appetites are water temperature and oxygen levels. 

Slaughterhouse

We then visited a state-of-the-art salmon slaughterhouse. Before arriving at the slaughterhouse, the salmon are harvested from the net pens when they reach 5kg. They are pumped into well-boats, which transport live salmon to a "holding pen" near the slaughterhouse, which are strategically located on the waterfront. The fish are given time to rest and adjust after the journey in the well-boat, anywhere between 24 hours to up to a week. At this point, the salmon are no longer being fed. Once they are rested and their cortisol levels have come down, it's time. A pipe is opened in the holding pen, which allows the salmon to begin swimming into the slaughterhouse. Once they arrive, they will swim into a giant robotic killing machine. The entire process is automated - the machine uses computer vision technology to identify the location of the salmon's head, administers a percussive blow to stun the fish, and immediately after, cuts the gills - killing the fish. Once dead, the fish are bled, chilled, gutted, de-slimed, cleaned, and sent down the conveyer belt to either be sold whole and fresh on ice, or to the fillet line for secondary processing. 

Feed Mill

The feed mill was my least favorite part of the salmon tour. First of all, the factory was a massive windowless building, situated in an obscured location at the bottom of a hill, adjacent to the ocean. And when we stepped out of the van, we caught the strong, unabating smell of fish oil in the air.  

The manufacturing process itself is quite simple. The company sources a variety of marine, agricultural and nutritional ingredients, places them in gigantic, five-story high stainless steel siloes, then combines the dry ingredients and through an extrusion process, turns them into pellets. Those pellets are then injected with fish oils, another vital ingredient for carnivorous fish. Then the pellets get packed into industrial-sized bags to get transported via truck and barge to fish farms across Southern Chile. 

Acme Chile 

Next stop on the salmon tour was Acme Chile! Acme Chile buys fresh Atlantic salmon from all of the big salmon farming companies in Chile. The head-on, gutted salmon arrive in Acme Chile's yard on ice in massive plastic totes. The totes get dumped into the facility, where the heads are cut, collars are removed, and then the fish are sent down the line - separated, filleted, pinboned, trimmed, and then placed on trays to head to the blast freezer. Then they are glazed, packed and palletized for transport to the U.S. We saw the sockeye line operating on Monday, and Franco showed us a behind-the-scenes look at the ongoing expansion project at the facility, which will provide some more space for production, freezer capacity, and employees. We ate lunch at the on-site canteen - a hearty, hot meal. Overall, we were super impressed by the design of the facility, the attention to product quality, the recycling and waste reutilization efforts, and data collection and analysis from the Acme Chile team. 

I'm very grateful to Franco, Marcela (Head of Certifications) and the entire Acme Chile team for their hospitality and warm welcome last week in Puerto Montt. The visit was incredibly eye-opening and educational. Gracias!