Business / New global leader in aquaculture services with a strong local connection
Photo: Hans J Marter/Shetland News
IT STARTED as a local venture to provide the Scottish salmon sector with a dedicated service of harvesting and carrying live fish.
Now it has grown into a multinational aquaculture service company operating in seven countries across three continents.
Founded in 2008, Johnson Marine became a major player in the Scottish industry over the next ten years before merging with Norwegian company Gripship to become Aquaship in 2018.
Five years later, private equity business America Industrial Partners (AIP) announced they had become the majority shareholder in both Aquaship and Intership with the aim to merge both companies.
This week, Trident Aqua Services confirmed the completion of the merger, which now also includes the FSV Group, another Norwegian marine services company.
Trident is said to become one of two globally operating aquaculture servicing companies, employing around 1,000 people in seven countries and operating a fleet of more than 60 vessels including live fish carriers, service boats, feed and harvesting vessels.
Sitting in the boardroom of the Norwegian company’s local office in Lerwick this week, managing director of Trident’s UK operation, Dean Johnson, is co-ordinating the deployment of ten vessels and around 100 employees working on wellboats and harvesting vessels in Shetland and along the Scottish west coast.
Most of the company’s UK employees are local, with some crew coming from Orkney and the Scottish mainland. Working a three week on/three week off shift rota system, crew members are usually flown to Inverness for onward travel to their vessel along the west coast.
There are also 15 engineers and office staff based at the UK headquarters at Garthspool, opposite Shetland Amenity Trust.
Dean and his father Ivor, one of the original founders of Johnson Marine, are the last remaining private shareholders in the new company.
The move to become bigger by merging with competitors is almost inevitable, Ivor explained, as investing in ever larger and more sophisticated service vessels has become an impossible task for small companies.
Trident is expecting delivery of three new cutting-edge live fish carriers, including one of the world’s largest wellboats, each costing upwards of £50 million.
All this is part of the drive towards ever larger salmon farming operations, and not just in Shetland, where Scottish Sea Farms is in the process of consolidating many of its smaller units into several larger offshore farms.
“We are trying to position ourselves to be able to service the developing offshore salmon sector,” Dean said.
“This is now happening all over the place, it is an inevitable development as it offers better growing conditions, and the technology to allow that move is now available.”
Meanwhile, Ivor pulls up a live map showing all the company’s vessels currently working in Norway, Iceland, Faroe, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Chile.
With the salmon farming industry rapidly evolving, the services industry had to do likewise to ensure fish welfare, operational stability and long-term profitability, Trident Aqua’s chief executive Ole Peter Brandal summarises the rationale behind the merger.
“Three companies merged into one team – ready to move forward together,” he said.
“The name is new, but the people, the expertise, and the commitment to our customers remains the same,” he said.
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