According to the agreement, Codfarmers will establish their own brood stock line with fish from the Marine Breed genetic program. The aim is to develop a cod especially adapted to the favourable natural conditions for the effective farming of Atlantic cod in Northern Norway. Codfarmers' integrated juvenile facility in Mørkvedbukta outside Bodø, will thus become one of Marine Breed's three locations for producing cod eggs and the only one in Northern Norway.

"With this agreement the last bits in our value chain are eventually falling into place. The Marine Breed research environment is world leading when it comes to breeding programs for aqua culture in general and for cod in particular. Improved growth through systematic breeding is our most important strategy to reduce production costs similar to what we have experienced with salmon previously. Marine Breed's genetic material is simply the best in the market. The agreement also, gives us the opportunity to establish a fully integrated brood stock and juvenile facility," says Øystein Steiro, the CEO of Codfarmers.

"This is an important agreement to us. Cod farming will become a large industry in Norway. With this agreement we secure our production due to the fact that we now can deliver cod eggs from three different production sites, i.e. from our own facility in Sunndalsøra, from the facility of Havlandet in Florø and from Codfarmers' new facility in Northern Norway. It is important to spread the production risk and obviously it is important to have our own production in Northern Norway, most likely the region that will take the lead in the development of cod farming as an industry in the future," says Tormod Spjøtvold, Managing director in Marine Breed.