P/F Bakkafrost is a Faroesesalmonfarming company based in Glyvrar on the island of Eysturoy in the Faroe Islands. Bakkafrost is the largest fish farming company in the Faroe Islands, and is the biggest private employer in the islands.[2] Bakkafrost is the third-largest fish farming company in the world.
Regin Jacobsen and his mother Oddvør Jacobsen are the main owners of Bakkafrost, Oddvør Jacobsen owns 7.77% of the shares and Regin Jacobsen owns 7.81% of the shares. There are currently more than 3000 different share owners from 22 countries.[1]
History
Bakkafrost was established in 1968 by the three brothers Martin, Hans and Roland Jacobsen, also named "á Bakka" instead of Jacobsen, which refers to the place name Á Bakka, where they come from. The current CEO since 1989 is Regin Jacobsen, also known in the Faroe Islands as Regin á Bakka, he is the son of Hans Jacobsen (Hans á Bakka), while the current CFO Høgni Dahl Jakobsen is the son of Martin Jakobsen. The first ten years they worked with herring, but in 1979 they started to work with salmon farming.[3]
In 2009, Bakkafrost produced 30.650 ton gutted weight. They had 14 licenses in 13 fjords in the Faroe Islands and owned 44% of all fish farming licenses in the Faroe Islands, mainly in the central and northeastern part of the islands. Bakkafrost has slaughterhouses in Kollafjørður and on the island Suðuroy in the village Vágur. In addition to this, they built a new slaughterhouse in Glyvrar, where the main office also is, which functions as a slaughterhouse, processing plant, and smoke house. At the time it was built in 2014, it was the largest building in the Faroe Islands. This record has now been taken by another building that is built and owned by Bakkafrost, the hatchery and smolt farm in Strond, Borðoy. This hatchery is also currently the world’s largest hatchery.
A few months before Bakkafrost was registered on the Oslo Stock Exchange the company merged with another Faroese company, Vestlax, which was also a salmon farming company.[4]
In April 2011 Bakkafrost bought the Faroese company Havsbrún for 1.1 billion Danish kroner. After this, Bakkafrost could control the whole chain of production from the salmon feed, to the further processing of the salmon. In 2010, before the Havsbrún was merged with Bakkafrost, Havsbrún's turnover was 823 million Danish kroner, and the operating profit was 238 million Danish kroner. Havsbrún at that time also owned 33,3% of Hanstholm Fiskemelsfabrik AS in Denmark, along with 78,1% of the shares in the salmon farming companies Faroe Farming and Viking Seafood.[6]
In September 2014 Bakkafrost was worth 6.1 billion Danish kroner. At the same time, Regin Jacobsen and his mother Oddvør Jacobsen became the first billionaire-family in the Faroe Islands, when their Bakkafrost-shares of 9,2% and 9,4% were worth 1.1 billion Danish kroner.[7]
In 2014 Bakkafrost sold 44,013 tons of salmon, and the same year the company had a profit of 899 million Danish kroner before taxes, the company paid 255 million in taxes, so after taxes the profit was kr 647 million.[8]
In March 2015 Gøtuvík (the bay of Gøta) became the first fish farm in the Faroe Islands to carry ASC certification, which is an internationally recognized standard backed by the WWF.[9]
On 28 May 2015 Bakkafrost shares were sold for 206 Norwegian kroner. On the same day the worth of Bakkafrost grew to kr.10 billion, a record high.[10]
In 2018 Bakkafrost finished the building of the world’s largest hatchery and on-land fish farm. The build started in late 2016, and was finished in a little more than a year. The building is just under 400 metres long, has 10 farming halls which are made up of one hatchery hall, one first-phase hall with 12 vessels, two second phase halls with 8 vessels each, 2 third-phase halls with 6 vessels each, and four large fourth-phase halls with 4 1600 cubic-metre vessels each.
In 2019, Bakkafrost bought all of the shares in the Scottish Salmon Company, which almost doubled Bakkafrost in size. At the same time Bakkafrost finished the building process of the world´s largest hatchery and fish farm, which is located on Borðoy, Faroe Islands.
In 2021 Bakkafrost announced that they would be starting their own aircraft service to transport their finished products to the United States, and other countries, starting out by buying one Boeing 767-200.[11] This makes Bakkafrost the first Fish farming company in the world to own and operate an aircraft service, and the only fish farming company in the world to own all of the value chain, from roe and feed production to processing, ship operations, and transport service.
In 2022 Bakkafrost will receive their newest addition to their ship fleet, a new wellboat which will be 109 meters long and 22 meters wide. It has a capacity of 10.000 m3.[12] This will be the company’s 8th ship.
In early 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bakkafrost stopped permanently selling salmon to Russia.[14] On 22 June 2022, the company announced that it had acquired a Boeing 757 cargo plane to use in shipping salmon from the Faroe Islands to the United States, enabling same-day distribution.[citation needed]
The economy of the Faroe Islands was the 166th largest in the world in 2014, having a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.613 billion per annum. GDP increased from DKK 8 billion in 1999, to 21 billion in 2019. The vast majority of Faroese exports, around 90%, consists of fishery products.
The Faroe Islands is served by an internal transport system based on roads, ferries, and helicopters. As of the 1970s, the majority of the population centres of the Faroe Islands have been joined to a single road network, connected by bridges and tunnels.
Klaksvík is the second largest town of the Faroe Islands behind Tórshavn. The town is located on Borðoy, which is one of the northernmost islands. It is the administrative centre of Klaksvík municipality.
The króna is the currency of the Faroe Islands. It is issued by Danmarks Nationalbank, the central bank of Denmark. It is not a separate currency, but is rather a local issue of banknotes denominated in the Danish krone, although Danish-issued coins are still used. Consequently, it does not have an ISO 4217 currency code and instead shares that of the Danish krone, DKK. This means that in the Faroe Islands, credit cards are charged in Danish kroner. The króna is subdivided into 100 oyru(r).
Eysturoy is a region and the second-largest of the Faroe Islands, both in size and population.
Sørvágur is a village on the island of Vágar in the Faroe Islands.
Katrin Ottarsdóttir is a Faroese movie director and author.
Strond is a former village in the north of the town of Klaksvík on the sound of Haraldssund in the Faroe Islands.
Norðoyatunnilin is a two-lane road tunnel under the Leirvíksfjørður in the Faroe Islands. It connects the islands of Eysturoy and Borðoy. The tunnel is 6.2 km long and goes down to a depth of 150 metres below sea level. The maximum gradient is approximately 6%. The tunnel entrances are near the towns of Leirvík on Eysturoy, and Klaksvík on Borðoy. Until the Eysturoyartunnilin opened in December 2020, Norðoyatunnilin was the longest tunnel in the Faroe Islands.
Vágur, meaning bay, is a town and municipality on the island of Suðuroy, part of the Faroe Islands.
Strandfaraskip Landsins is the government agency for public transport in the Faroe Islands. It is owned by the Faroese national government under the Ministry of Finance (Fíggjamálaráðið) and runs seven ferry routes and a number of bus routes.
The British occupation of the Faroe Islands during World War II, also known as Operation Valentine, was implemented immediately following the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. It was a small component of the roles of Nordic countries in World War II.
Syðrugøta is a village on the east coast of the Faroese island of Eysturoy in Eystur Municipality.
The Faroe or Faeroe Islands, or simply the Faroes, are an archipelago in the North Atlantic Ocean and an autonomous territory of the Kingdom of Denmark. The official language of the country is Faroese, which is closely related to and partially mutually intelligible with Icelandic.
The Faroese Literature Prize, also known as the Mentanarvirðisløn M. A. Jacobsens, is a prize for Faroese literature that was begun by the Tórshavnar kommuna in 1958. Its winners include Heðin Brú, Jákup Pauli Gregoriussen, Jóanes Nielsen and Kristian Blak. The prize is always awarded at a ceremony in Tórshavn on 17 September or a day close to 17 September, which is the birthday of Mads Andreas Jacobsen. M. A. Jacobsen was a Faroese politician and librarian who headed the National Library of the Faroe Islands, then called Færø Amts Bibliotek in Danish but later renamed Landsbókasavnið, in Faroese. M. A. Jacobsen was the mayor of Tórshavn and a member of the Løgting. The M. A. Jacobsen Prize was at first only for writers, but was later expanded to three categories: one award for Faroese fiction, one for Faroese nonfiction and one for other cultural achievements. In 2012 the prize was worth 35,000 Danish kroner.
The Tour of Faroe Islands is a road cycling race held in the Faroe Islands. The race consists of a men's, women's and juniors' competition over a prologue and four or five stages, which are for elite cyclists and shorter distances for non-elite cyclists. From 2011 to 2013, the race was changed to four stages in three days. The first edition of the Kring Føroyar tour was held in 1996 but it was not an official race; the 1997 Tour was the first official edition of the race. The race is normally held in July shortly before Ólavsøka. In 2012 the race was held from 20 July to 22 July. The last day of the race is held in Tórshavn, and the roads are closed for traffic on that day. In 2015 the race will be held from 22–26 July. For sponsor reasons the name of the tour was Statoil Kring Føroyar, and later when the Faroese company changed its name from Statoil to Effo, the tour was called Effo Kring Føroyar. In 2014 the race got a new main sponsor and the name was changed to Volvo Kring Føroyar. As of 2015, the length of the race is 430 kilometres (270 mi) for elite cyclists and 230 kilometres (140 mi) for youth and senior cyclists.
Ebba Hentze was a Faroese writer of children's books and a poet and translator.
Rasmus Rasmussen, also known as Regin í Líð and Rasmus á Háskúlanum, was a Faroese folk high school teacher, writer, and independence activist.
The Faroe Islands consist of 18 islands, several of which are deeply incised by fjords.
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