Ocean Farming has received approval from the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Fisheries for the development of the world's first automated 'exposed' aquaculture facility.
Planned to be built outside of Trondheim, the new facility will combine marine engineering, marine cybernetics and marine biology. It will initially support salmon farming and significantly includes other fish types in the future.
Supported by Kongsberg Maritime, the Ocean Farming facility is expected to address the challenges of more traditional inshore fish farming facilities by being located in deeper waters, further from the coast.
Kongsberg Maritime president Egil Haugsdal said: "The Ocean Farming facility introduces a paradigm shift in salmon farming now, and other fish types in the future.
"With greater focus on biology and nurturing healthier fish, the concept delivers significantly improved yields that will prove important in the decades to come as part of Norway's strategy to leverage its aquaculture and offshore expertise to meet the challenges of accelerating population growth and the pressures this places on the world's food supply chain.
Kongsberg Maritime business development aquaculture operations principal engineer Thor Hukkelås said: "To succeed in placing fish farming in exposed areas as a viable solution to address the food gap challenge, we need to integrate and harmonies a wide range of maritime and offshore technologies, for the fish farm itself and the new vessels that will serve it.
"This is a unique, highly technical project where we will transfer our technology base and knowledge of developing for oil & gas production units and the most sophisticated vessels to provide high levels of automation and control."
In particular, the facility is designed to contribute to the Norway's plan to deliver technical solutions to help address the global food deficit.
The fully automated facility will feature submerged, anchored fixed structure which floats in the exposed ocean and in water depths of 100m to 300m.
For the farming facility, Kongsberg will supply the K-Chief 600 automation system, an extensive telecoms and positioning package as well as the AISBS610 system and associated AIS infrastructure.
