Bakkafrost

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.

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.

On 26 March 2010 the company was registered on Oslo Stock Exchange.

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.