Chile

Los Arrayanes is the first post-smolt salmon land-based (RAS) project to be built in Chile. It was completed in the last quarter of 2022 and is owned by local salmon farmer Salmones Austral.

Located on the east coast of the Reloncaví estuary, about 70km from Puerto Montt, Los Arrayanes’ farming systems are supplied with fresh and salt water (25ppt) from deep wells on the same property, which are disinfected with UV filters.

The farm is designed to rear Atlantic salmon, from 40g fingerlings to 500gpost-smolt. It has three independent RAS units: ‘winter’, ‘summer’ and ‘post-smolt’, which operate with different levels of salinity.

The fingerlings start off in ‘winter’ units, where they remain until they reach 80g in weight and are then transferred to ‘summer’ units, where they grow to 150g and then are taken to the final ‘post-smolt’ units.

Subsequently, through an automated dispatch system, the fish are loaded onto a wellboat, to finally be transported to the company’s different farm sites, located between the regions of Los Lagos and Magallanes.

The ‘winter’ system has eight tanks of 275m³ each, the ‘summer’ unit has eight 500m³ tanks, and the ‘post-smolt’ has six 1,250m³ tanks, the latter being the largest RAS volume tanks in Chile with production capacity of 6 million post-smolt of up to 500g per year.

Automation is one of the main characteristics of this productive unit, which includes biofilter backwashing, automatic blocking in the event of power or water supply cuts, automatic feed distribution and vacuum mortality collection.