Cardinal News: Then & Now takes a look back at the stories we brought you over the last 12 months. Through the end of the year, we’re sharing updates on some of the people and issues that made news in 2024. This installment: the salmon farm that’s been in the works for Southwest Virginia for more than a decade.
The huge salmon farm planned for a 200-acre site near the Tazewell County-Russell County line remains on track to open in mid-2028 after the company building it spent about four months working on soil remediation over the summer.
It’s not clear, however, when work will resume due to a delay in the construction of an access road that Russell County committed to building to the front of the property.
But company officials and Del. Will Morefield, R-Tazewell County, say they are hopeful the road will be under construction within a couple of months, so the full project can move forward this spring.
The idea for the long-awaited project came from Morefield after he traveled to Israel in 2013 and met with a company that supplies technology for commercial aquaculture operations.
Over the nearly 12 years since then, the opening date has been pushed back a couple of times, the estimated cost of the project has risen and there were problems when a lot of porous clay was found on the site.
In April, an official with the private equity firm that created Pure Salmon — the company building the salmon farm — traveled from Singapore to Southwest Virginia to share some news that local partners were eager to hear: Work would resume in June on the site off U.S. 19 behind Southwest Virginia Community College, and the land-based fish farm was now expected to open in mid-2028. Hiring would start in 2027, said Karim Ghannam, co-founder and chief investment officer for Singapore-based 8F Asset Management.
Headquartered in Abu Dhabi, Pure Salmon is a global salmon farming and processing company. It’s also currently developing fish farms in Japan, France and Brunei. The four farms are expected to produce a total of 35,000 tons of Atlantic salmon per year, including 10,000 tons at the Southwest Virginia farm.
The company has taken steps to settle and compact the soil at the Southwest Virginia site, including low-mobility grout and wick drains, to ensure that there is no foundation settling in the future.
Crews continued soil remediation over about four months beginning in June, said Lala Paola Korall, a spokesperson for Pure Salmon.
Tazewell County Administrator Eric Young said Pure Salmon crews did initial earthwork earlier that needed time to settle and returned over the summer to move some of the surcharge, which involves placing weight over a building area to simulate the future weight of the facility that will be built there. That settles the soil more rapidly.
Crews also started prepping some of the sites for the nine buildings that will be constructed, he said.
Currently, there is no work going on at the site, but engineering and design work is happening, according to Korall.
Dealing with delays
Because the project is in Tazewell and Russell counties, the two governments split up the work that must be done to prepare for the salmon farm. Russell County is responsible for the access road and Tazewell County is handling water and sewer improvements.
The access road was supposed to be built last summer, at the same time that soil work resumed at the site, but that did not happen due to engineering problems with the road project, Korall said.
Company officials hope the road project can start within a couple of months. The next phase of work for the salmon farm will require large vehicles that can’t get in and out safely on the current road that’s being used at the back of the property, Korall said.
Russell County Administrator Lonzo Lester did not respond to phone and email messages seeking comment on the status of the access road.
Morefield said last week that the most recent update he had was that the county had issued the bid for the road work.
“I’m hoping we’ll see construction proceed at least within the next two months,” he said.
Young said his understanding is that Pure Salmon had been planning to return to the site in the spring so that crews could start to install a lot of underground piping.
“If I understand this correctly, there will be about 25 miles of pipes,” he said.
Tazewell County also ran into difficulties when it put its projects out to bid and they came back about $2 million higher than expected, Young said. The plan now is to readvertise the bids, probably in January, in hopes the costs will come down. That work was initially expected to total $9 million to $10 million, Young said earlier.
“We have a feeling that a lot of this federal infrastructure money and COVID-related spending is really driving up the cost, particularly of water and sewer projects, and we’re hoping that a lot of that will work itself out in the system after this winter,” he said.
Originally, the water and sewer work was to have started in September or October. The cost issues will likely result in a delay of about four months, which would still fall in line with the current timeline for the salmon farm, Young said.
Currently, the site has water and sewer service, but it’s not nearly robust enough to provide the tremendous amount of water that the aquaculture facility will require, Young said.
The biggest need for water, 300,000 to 400,000 gallons per day, will come during processing of the fish, Young said.
“We can produce that, but the pipes that we have and the pumps that we have are going to have to be upgraded to push it to them and then collect it from them when they release it,” he explained.
Earlier, Pure Salmon said the salmon farm would likely require a $300 million investment. Now, Korall would only say it will cost “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Morefield said there are a lot of rumors circulating that billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been spent on the project, but that’s not true.
“The majority of funds … has all come from private equity,” he said. “So, even though the project is nowhere near to being complete, the fact that the company has already committed and spent $80 million is something to be said.”
Morefield said he remains as excited about the project today as he was when he proposed it so long ago. Along the way, some lessons have been learned, including the need for build-ready sites across the state — but especially in Southwest Virginia due to the challenges of the terrain and soil, he said.
“The entire commonwealth should recognize that if we’re going to promote economic development and encourage new investment in Southwest Virginia, we have to have ready-built sites or at the very least have property available that can be developed,” he said.
Hiring for the salmon farm is still expected in 2027, although some may occur in 2026, according to Korall.