Operations
Our business is ‘vertically integrated’ with the following facilities in Tasmania.
Cressy Hatchery
Our hatchery at Cressy features a state-of-the-art recirculation system that uses less than five per cent of the water used in traditional hatcheries, significantly reducing our environmental footprint.
Here, eggs are incubated, hatched and grown in fresh water tanks. When fish reach 5 – 10 grams, they are transferred to larger tanks and continue to grow for the next 12 months.
At 18-24 months old, our salmon make the transformation from parr to smolt, enabling them to thrive in saltwater. They are then transferred to sea at around 100g.
Macquarie Harbour
Petuna pioneered the production of fish in Macquarie Harbour, having been there for nearly 30 years. We understand and embrace our vital role in helping maintain the integrity of the Harbour environment. It is also in our commercial best interest to do so.
Our smolt are transferred from the hatchery at Cressy to Macquarie Harbour at between 18-24 months old, when they are ready to thrive in salt water.
Macquarie Harbour is a body of water six times the size of Sydney Harbour. Salmon farming utilises around three per cent of the total Harbour area. Within that area, Petuna has four leases – Table Head, Table Head Central, Liberty and Bryans Bay.
Our marine farms are stocked at some of the lowest commercial stocking densities in the world. Conservative biomass management has always been and will continue to be an inherent company philosophy.
Rowella
Our marine farm at Rowella on the Tamar River is a smaller operation than Macquarie Harbour, growing around 2,800 tonnes of salmon each year and employing 25 people.
Strong river flows and tidal movements at Rowella lend themselves to a continual supply of well oxygenated water. Our brass-cage technology and walkways linking our marine farms in the Tamar to the shore, make it unique to any other aquaculture sites in the southern hemisphere, allowing feeding and harvesting without any need for boats.
The site also benefits from its isolation from other marine farms, with particularly good biosecurity and environmental outcomes.
Devonport Processing Facility
At our processing facility in Devonport, salmon are processed the same day they are harvested by our team of more than 100 local employees.
Every part of the fish is used so there is no processing waste from the site, significantly limiting our carbon footprint. By-products generated are diverted away from the landfill disposal options that were traditionally the depository for waste from seafood processing.
Petuna’s high-quality, organic by-products are converted into usable proteins, such as fish meal and oil, mixed with green waste to form compost and used as a protein and flavour concentrate for pet food.
In addition, our packaging wastes – made up of cardboard, paper, soft plastics and polystyrene – are segregated into recyclable and non-recyclable materials, reducing our packaging waste by 25 tonnes.
