Fishy Finances – could your money be propping up ‘Big Salmon’?

When you think of the food system, I imagine the image that comes to mind for most people is a vision of fields of crops and sheep, a few tractors or maybe even your local supermarket.  But an aspect that tends to be left out of the conversation is seafood and more specifically fish farming fish (a.k.a aquaculture).

Many people are amazed to learn that aquaculture is the fastest-growing food production system in the world with the farmed salmon industry being the most profitable. Since the 1990s the production of farmed salmon has grown by over 1,000%.

But this rapacious growth comes at a cost.

The salmon farming industry is plundering our ocean and extracting food from communities living in some of the poorest parts of the world. Precious wild fish populations are being squandered to feed farmed salmon, while wild salmon populations facing collapse are plagued by sea lice infestations passed on from salmon farms.  Our ecosystems are drowning in plastics, chemicals, and fish faeces. As the industry has grown, it is communities, wild fish populations and nature around the world that are paying the price.

This catastrophic growth does not happen in isolation and would not have been possible without significant financial backing.

After months of detailed and rigorous research, with financial analysis conducted by Profundo, we set out to expose industrial salmon farming’s biggest financial backers through our new report, Fishy Finances, published in partnership with the Global Salmon Farming Resistance.

What did we uncover?

1. Industrial salmon farming is receiving BILLIONS of dollars from big banks and investors around the world.

From January 2015 – November 2024, industrial salmon farming received $18.8 billion in credit and, as of November 2024, financial institutions had nearly $12 billion invested in some of the world’s biggest salmon farming companies, with the Government Pension Fund Norway topping the chart as the largest single investor ($1.7 billion).

The top 5 creditors we identified were Scandinavian banks Nordea, DNB, Danske Bank and Dutch banks Rabobank and ABN Amro.

The top 5 investors we identified were Government Pension Fund Norway, BlackRock, Storebrand, Vanguard and Nordea.

2. Even ‘sustainable’ banks are getting a fin in the game.

Our research also reveals that even so-called ‘sustainable’ banks are fuelling salmon farming. As of November 2024, Triodos had $16 million invested into Bakkafrost, one the world’s largest salmon farming companies. Triodos recently asked, “Your money isn’t just sitting in your bank account – it’s being used to fund something. But is it funding what you believe in?”.  Very few of its customers would support industrial salmon farming given the toll it is extracting from the environment and communities around the world.

3. Mowi, the world’s largest salmon farming company, is reeling in BILLIONS from financiers.

The biggest benefactor of all these fishy finances is the global salmon farming giant Mowi – which made €5.6 billion (US$5.9 billion) in revenue in 2024.  From January 2015 – November 2024, it received over one-third of all credit combined ($7 billion) and had received over half of all investment as of November 2024 ($6 billion).

All of this is giving Mowi the heft to continue on its course of global domination. From 2015-2024 Mowi’s farmed salmon production grew by nearly one-fifth, from 420,000 tonnes to 502,000 tonnes, and it more than doubled its feed production from 282,000 tonnes to 582,000 tonnes.

4. As if this wasn’t enough, MILLIONS of pounds of taxpayer money are also pouring into this industry.

The UK and Scottish government have funnelled MILLIONS of pounds of taxpayer money into some of the world’s biggest salmon farming giants. At a time of increasingly squeezed government finances, this is a shocking use of public money.

The UK government provided £7 million to Mowi Scotland (yes, Mowi again…) through the UK Seafood Fund between 2022-2023 – five times the amount Mowi paid in UK taxes in 2022 (£1.3 million).

The fund also handed out £5 million to Scottish Sea Farms (co-owned by Lerøy Seafood Group and SalMar) between 2022 – 2023 – nearly double what the company paid in taxes to the UK treasury in 2023 (£2.8 million).

Since 2021, the Marine Fund Scotland has awarded nearly £5 million (£4.8 million) to salmon farming companies including Bakkafrost subsidiary the Scottish Salmon Company, Mowi and Cooke Aquaculture.

This seems like a great deal for a profit-hungry foreign corporations benefitting from the Scottish coast and less so for the UK taxpayer.

What’s the consequence of all this financial backing?

The significant financial backing of this destructive industry has fuelled the unsustainable growth of an industry that urgently needs to be rolled back.

Total global production of farmed salmon increased by nearly one-third, from 2.3 million tonnes in 2015 to nearly 3 million tonnes in 2024, considerably outpacing the growth of global meat production. The explosive rise of salmon farming companies in the space of mere decades would not have been possible without the billions in financial support provided by banks, asset managers and governments.

Far from being passive bystanders, financial institutions are actively driving an industry that values profits over everything else.

What can we do?

Our call to action is simple. It’s time to #DefundBigSalmon.

Share our Instagram post far and wide and read our full report here.