Welcome, everybody. I'm Mark Dewdney. I'm the Chairman of New Zealand King Salmon. It's my pleasure, privilege, and great honor today to lead the meeting. I'll just start with an introduction. Me mihi ka tika ki ngā hunga i whakakanohi i ngā iwi o Te Tauihu e mihi ana. Kei aku nui, kei aku rahi, nau mai ki tō tātou hui. Koutou kua tae ā-tinana, me koutou kua tae ā-huitopa mai, ngā mihi mō tō koutou taenga mai.
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou. Apologies, to anybody if I've butchered that. But, welcome, everybody, and it is, a great honor to have everybody here today. Welcome to the tenth annual shareholders' meeting of New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited. It's a privilege to address our shareholders, partners, and team members, both in person and online. Thank you all for your continued support. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to a few guests in attendance today, either in the room or online, including Iwi representatives from Ngāti Kuia, Te Ātiawa, and Ngāti Rārua. We are honored to have you join us today.
We also have members from the Ministry for Primary Industries, with whom we have a significant partnership program called Future Farming, centered around piloting some of our future growth projects. We also have Invest NZ with us today, who, along with their sister organization, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, provide great assistance and advice to the aquaculture sector. Having your support and partnerships are really important to the long-term sustainability and growth of our company. It's only been eight months since our last ASM in June last year. This reporting period, from 1 February to 30 September 2025, marks our transition to a new 30 September balance date. We've made this change to allow us to report at a time when our business performance is its most predictable.
While the headline financial result for this period is disappointing, and we acknowledge that, we are happy with the progress that we have made throughout the business, and we look forward to sharing this progress with you all today. Some housekeeping. If we have an emergency, and that's highly unlikely, but if we do, an alarm will sound. Please exit the building, out, down, and assemble at the grass area outside the hotel entrance. If we have an earthquake, drop to the floor, cover, and remain inside until things settle down, and somebody will then direct us to, you know, do what we need to do. I'd like to introduce my board colleagues. In person today, we have Paul Munro and Jack Porus. Yong Zhang is unable to attend the ASM today due to conflicting events, but is online.
Unfortunately, both Victoria Taylor and Catriona Macleod are unwell and have been unable to travel down to Nelson. But again, both are online. All three send their, their best wishes and apologies for not being able to join shareholders today in person. Carol Chen, who you will be aware, has been a director on our board, representing China Resources Limited, resigned from the board effective 16th January 2026. I'd just like to acknowledge Carol's service and contribution to our business over her tenure on the board. She was certainly, you know, really, really helpful for us, both in her capacity as a director, but also in terms of helping us to establish our, channels into the Chinese market, which, will be a really critical market for us as we go forward and grow our business.
We also note that China Resources Enterprise Limited completed an intra-group transfer of their shareholding to China Resources Asset Management, and that was released to the NZX on the fourteenth of January. So China Resources, the holding company, have transferred the shareholding in King Salmon from one of their divisions to another. Our board, the King Salmon board, have yet to meet with the China Resources, the new China Resources Asset Management team, but are scheduled to do so later in the year. The stage, that meeting will happen in May when they will come down to New Zealand. And we'll consider at that time whether a replacement director from China Resources Asset Management will be appointed to the board.
No decisions have been taken on that yet, but if we do make a decision as a board to appoint a new representative, then they will be appointed in accordance with NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1, which will mean that they will be up for re-election by shareholders at the 2027 ASM. So, that will work its way through over the next few months. We also have our senior management team joining us today, the team who do all the hard work. And I would like to make special welcome to new members of the team that are here with us today, and I'll introduce everybody if I may, so that you can understand who's running the day-to-day business.
Please make sure you take some time at the end of the formal proceedings today to talk to these guys, ask them what they're doing. They're a wonderful team of very committed and skilled executives. We're very lucky to have them. I'll start with our CEO, Carl. Everybody knows Carl. Carl will address you shortly, and will provide, you know, all the normal insights into our financial performance, strategy, and operational performance. We have Katie Bennett, who is our interim CFO, doing a wonderful job. Katie at the back. We have Graeme Tregidga, our Chief Commercial Officer, looks after sales, customers . Welcome, Paul Steer. Good to see you.
I t's still coming. This is the formal part, then the best part. We have Grant Lovell. As you know, Grant runs our aquaculture business. Nikki Rackley, General Manager, People and Culture. Neil Roper, who is new to New Zealand King Salmon, joined us from Fonterra, shifted to Nelson with his young family and is running all of our operations and supply chain. Monique Hatfull, who's Head of Relationships and Communications, down the back. Monique, thank you for the work you've done putting today together. Andrew Harrison, Head of Performance and Strategy. And we have other staff with us today, not part of the exec, but key, key staff members. Dr. Zac Waddington, who is our Fish Health and Welfare Manager. Toni Sythes looks after legal, our General Counsel.
Anna Morgan and Georgia Dixon, who look after really the running of the board and the exec team, and keep us all directed and going the right direction. We have William Lovell, senior audit manager from PwC. William will be able to take any specific questions that you may have relating to the audit. We'll do those within the general Q&A session. We have Mark Tappenden and Jane Strickland from Computershare, who will assist with the voting. In terms of the agenda, I'll provide a brief update from the board, focusing on reflections of the last financial year and the work ahead. Carl will then present the full company update, including covering today's major resolution, which is the wellboat transaction.
Once Carl's gone through everything, we'll have a general Q&A session, and then I'll run through the procedural requirements and resolutions that we are putting to shareholders for a vote. You will have received a comprehensive information pack on the wellboat resolution and the notice of meeting, but we'll spend more time on that today to make sure we cover the key reasons for bringing a wellboat into our operational model. It is a significant initiative, a significant commitment for the business to make over a number of years ahead, indefinitely, we believe, and we think that it will be one of the more transformational initiatives that the company has undertaken in its duration. We're very pleased to bring this resolution to you today for voting. It's the result of a n enormous amount of work from our teams throughout the business.
It's a vessel which transfers live fish, and it will create a major opportunity to improve our farming operations. It's an initiative that the board are very, very pleased and proud to be able to endorse. A little more housekeeping. This year, for the first time, we've opened up the meeting to allow shareholders to vote online and to enable questions to be asked via the meeting portal, particularly around the ordinary resolution for the wellboat transaction. You will have received instructions from Computershare already, but given that this is a new way to vote, we just wanna make sure that everybody is aware how voting will happen, given it's in a hybrid form. So we're holding the meeting both in person and online.
For those of you who are here virtually, if you would like to submit a question, then the Q&A section is always open. So please put your questions in as the meeting is progressing, and our team will then kind of compile those and put them into a form that they can be answered in the Q&A session. If you're in the room and you'd like to ask a question, please put your hand up. We'll deliver a microphone. Please state your name, ask your question, and then we'll answer it through whoever is best placed to do that. The voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of the business.
If you're in the room and you don't have a voting paper and would like one, just, if you could just put your hand up if you haven't voted and would like to, and Computershare will assist you. If you're online and eligible to vote, please just cast your vote under the Vote tab. Once the voting is opened, the votes will be submitted. You can change your votes if you're online, up until the time that I declare the voting closed. At the end of the meeting, Computershare will collect any final voting papers. They will act as scrutineers. They'll tally everything, and they will post the outcomes on the NZX later this afternoon. If you need any help at any point, just ask the Computershare team. So I now declare that voting is open for all resolutions. Okay.
Everyone's comfortable with that? I'll move on to my brief chair update. So reflecting on the last financial period, and again, just noting that it was for an eight-month period, given the change in our balance date. The key results, we reported a net loss for the eight months to 30 September 2025. That was a net loss of NZD 6.3 million, which compared to a profit for the prior twelve months, ending 31 January 2025 of NZD 13.4 million. So we went from a profit to a loss in the eight months. That's at the net profit after tax line. Our EBITDA, which is the measure we use of essentially of cash earnings, for the eight-month period, was NZD 7.1 million, and that compared to a profit of NZD 29.7 million for the twelve months ending 31 January 2025.
Revenue. Overall revenue for the eight months ending 30 September 2025 was NZD 117.7 million. Revenue for the prior period, ending 31 January 2025, was NZD 211 million. Now, that's all a l ittle bit hard to kind of follow, given we've gone from 12 months to eight months. The eight-month period was challenging for us. You know, we, we are disappointed in the loss, and I do acknowledge that that is not, you know, a financial performance that we want to deliver. And I acknowledge as shareholders that, you know, that is not why you invest in this business. But, you know, we need to be transparent, and we need to explain that, and we need to look forward. The primary reason for the reduction was the result of reduced harvest.
We only harvested 3,315 tons in the 8-month period to 30 September, compared to 6,778 tons in the 12 years prior. 12 months prior, sorry. So, you know, as the fish volumes that we could get out of the water went down, less to sell, less to cover the overhead costs, and that flows through to a loss. We talked a lot about that at the last ASM and the reasons for having to slow up harvest and slow up the sales. So I acknowledge that. But I really want to point out as well that through that, we are absolutely committed to building this business t o the point where it is able to achieve the significant potential that it has and capture what we believe are significant opportunities in the market.
T his business will grow, this business will become profitable, and this business will reward shareholders who maintain their support. We need to keep in mind that aquaculture is a long game, and for those who have been in it for a long time, you know, we're all acutely aware of that. We remain, as the board, confident about our progress, and we remain really confident about our current position. We have a strong balance sheet with net cash on hand of NZD 46.6 million, which puts us in a really healthy cash position to fund the growth initiatives that we have been working on over the last 12 months and will continue working on in the years to come.
We're focused on building stability and resilience. Stabilizing the core has been priority number 1 for us in the last 8-month period, and we're seeing really positive improvements. You know, this summer is a really important proof point for us. You know, we've implemented a number of new initiatives leading into this summer to improve the health and the resilience of our fish. And I'm very pleased to be able to say that those initiatives appear to be working as we had intended they would be. Things are tracking well out at sea, and Carl will talk more about that in more detail as he goes ahead. We've also made significant progress on our growth strategy over the period, making several key infrastructure purchases that will help us to reach our future scale-up goals.
A new factory site, a wellboat, plans for recirculating aquaculture systems to improve the, you know, reliability and the, you know, the, the quality and cost performance of our, of our, young fish grow out. Those things are all starting to come together just as we want them to. We're making good progress out at Blue Endeavour, getting moorings in place, ready for us to tow the first pens out and relocate fish to the open ocean later this year. I think as importantly as anything else, we have a really, really good team of experienced, loyal, committed staff working throughout our business. You know, our fish are important, our people are critical. We're very happy with the way that side of the business is going.
In line with previous years and based on the significant work and the expenditure that we've got ahead of us, the board has reconfirmed that dividends will remain on hold for the foreseeable future. You know, at least until we get through the next phases of our growth strategy. Before I pass to Carl, I just want to wrap up by saying that I believe that this coming year will be one of the most transformational that we have ever had, with us leading some significant New Zealand firsts. The first time an ocean salmon pilot farm will be operated in New Zealand, the first time a recirculating aquaculture system for the king salmon species has been commenced, and pending the outcome of today's vote, the first time a wellboat will operate within New Zealand waters.
If these initiatives are successful, which we believe they will be, they will transform not only the future of our company, but that of New Zealand's salmon aquaculture sector. On behalf of the board, I want to thank Carl, I want to thank our management team, and I want to thank our wider New Zealand King Salmon whānau for all of your work over the last period. We look forward to what the year ahead will bring. I'll pass to Carl.
Excellent. Thanks, Mark. Kia ora koutou. My name's Carl Carrington, and I'm the Chief Executive Officer here at King Salmon. This is now my third rotation around the sun as I joined the business in August 2023. Today, I'll be taking you through the highlights from the last financial period for financial year 2025, ending September. I'll talk about fish performance, I'll provide market and business update, and finishing with the outlook for the coming financial year. Onto the heavy stuff, financial summary. As we covered at the last ASM, from March 2025, we experienced biological challenges across the sea farms. We had subdued feed outs, which slowed biomass growth for around four months, and we deliberately reduced harvest from April through to late October to rebuild biomass. The consequences were lower revenue, reduced overhead recovery, higher costs of goods sold, and weaker earnings.
Really, it's more than a trifecta of bad outcomes, despite gains in pricing and product mix. Pro forma, EBIT declined from NZD 29.7 million for the twelve months ended January 2025, to NZD 7.1 million for the eight months ended September 2025. While disappointing, on the positive side, the adapted farming model, which sees us exiting our Pelorus and Queen Charlotte sites over summer and concentrating our farming in the Tory Channel locations to optimize seasonal performance and production, again, prevented elevated mortality and cushioned a potentially far worse outcome. The revenue for the eight-month period was NZD 118 million, reflecting the shorter reporting period and the reduced harvest. North America remains our largest market at 41%.
China pleasingly grew to 5%, while Australia slightly reduced to 10% as a result of lower supply, not a result of lower demand. However, it is a strategic growth market for us, and New Zealand, at 34%, remains vital as our home market. Japan remains important for long-standing relationships and has a large market capable of taking significant volumes if required, albeit achieving global pricing parity in that market can be challenging. The FY NPAT for the period was a loss of NZD 6.3 million, strongly influenced by reduced biomass inventory, which impacts the fair value of our livestock on the balance sheet versus the prior year. CapEx for FY 2025 September period was forecast at around NZD 14 million, including approximately NZD 2.7 million of non-Blue Endeavour pilot spend, which focused on stay-in-business items such as nets, moorings, machinery, and site works.
Due to the balance date change, New Zealand King Salmon has had a 20-month income tax period from 1 February 2024 to 30 September 2025. Losses generated in the first half of FY 2025 through to September will offset tax payable position from the 12 months ended 31 January 2025. Despite the challenges we faced, particularly with fish performance and environmental volatility, we have made significant strides by strategically investing in our future growth. But before I get to these investments, I'll address the most important question on your mind: how are our fish performing so far this summer? So in the aquaculture space, our focus has been on strengthening our core business and laying the foundations for significant expansion in the years ahead, and the lessons are very clear. Disciplined husbandry, better summer diets, and thermotolerance breeding are the right long-term levers.
Summer has started well, with mortality and fish performance tracking nicely. Feed volumes have remained strong throughout the early part of summer, but we continue to track this closely. It has been a real fish focus over this period, with net cleaning to optimize the pen environments, fish health monitoring for early detection of any issues, and a strong focus on feeding and feed, feed quality. Sorry, I've just got out of sequence on pages here. I'll just jump to the inshore optimization of consents. In 2024, the Resource Management Extended Duration Coastal Permits and Marine Farms Bill extended the duration of consents across our farms out to 2050. During 2025, we worked with the Marlborough District Council to update conditions at several high-flow sites.
As a result of this process, the need for feed staging was removed, allowing earlier access to potentially usable feed discharge of up to 5,000 tons across our inshore operations. This additional feed discharge capacity underpins the business case for the wellboat, where the economics stack up based on our inshore farms alone. I'll now spend some time discussing the opportunity we have in front of us to lease a wellboat. The introduction of a wellboat marks one of the most transformative steps NZKS has taken in over two decades. It will fundamentally reshape how we farm, creating a more resilient, efficient, and future-ready operation. You have received comprehensive information on the notice of meeting released to the market on 19th January, but I'd like to spend some time now walking you through why this is such a transformative and fundamentally essential next step for our company.
To start with, it's important to understand what a wellboat is and how it functions. A wellboat is a specialized vessel designed for the safe transport of live fish, effectively serving as a floating aquarium that maintains optimal conditions for fish welfare during transit over long distances. Wellboats have become an integral part of the global aquaculture industry, streamlining operations and supporting higher standards of fish welfare in the farming operation. The diagram here highlights the sophisticated features of a modern wellboat, features that will significantly advance our farming capabilities and enhance our scalability. The wellboat plays a crucial role in improving fish welfare and biosecurity. By facilitating precise grading and enabling early removal of runts or failed smolt, we can minimize disease risk and ensure a healthier, more uniform stock.
The vessel supports industry-leading aquaculture practices by enabling single year class management and allowing the fallowing of sites, both of which contribute to elevated biosecurity standards. Additionally, optimizing site usage with the wellboat helps to potentially reduce the need for therapeutic treatments in the future. From an operational perspective, the introduction of a wellboat greatly enhances risk management and efficiency. Transitioning from the current higher risk tow model to the wellboat aligns our practices with proven international standards for live transport, reducing operational risks and improving the reliability of our processes. Let's now turn to the reasons a wellboat is critical for our operations and the transformative impact it will have on our company's trajectory. We have long signaled that a wellboat is essential as an enabler for scaling our business and is a prerequisite for advancing Blue Endeavour beyond the pilot phase.
Through detailed business case analysis, it became clear that a wellboat does far more than just support expansion. It also significantly enhances the productivity and resilience of our current sites. With a wellboat, we can efficiently transfer fish out of certain farm locations during summer, optimizing their welfare and reducing biological risk. This also allows us to make better use of our feed discharge allowance, as discussed earlier, maximizing our operational efficiency. The introduction of a wellboat fundamentally expands our reliable farming capacity. It unlocks the potential for an additional 2,000 tons of annual harvest within our existing inshore footprint. This is not just incremental growth, it is a step change that strengthens our ability to meet market demand and maintain stable supply year-round. The resulting uplift could represent NZD 60 million or more in additional revenue.
Operationally, we anticipate over 100 wellboat movements in the first financial year alone, streamlining our farming model and enabling movements that are currently not possible with the existing methods. The map on the right illustrates the enhanced mobility and flexibility the wellboat will provide, significantly enhancing farming operations. Strategically, the wellboat delivers improved forecasting and operational clarity. With in-cycle fish counts and grading, we will have more robust biomass inventory, supporting better planning and decision-making across the business. Dedicated nursery and grow out sites, site strategies will further simplify operations and reduce complexity. Additionally, the wellboat is the cornerstone for future open ocean growth and is an indispensable asset for the Blue Endeavour open ocean project . Globally, the use of wellboats is standard practice in salmon farming, especially for live fish transport. By investing in this technology, NZKS will align with industry-leading, scalable, and responsible operating models.
Notably, New Zealand remains the only major salmon-producing country where wellboats are not yet in use, and this investment marks a significant step towards modernizing our sector. In summary, the rationale for investing a wellboat is extremely compelling. This is why we have worked diligently to secure this opportunity for NZKS. I'll now outline the specifics of the vessel we have secured for lease, pending the outcome of today's vote. After conducting a thorough global review of wellboat options, we identified a vessel that meets both the technical requirements and cost parameters necessary to support our operations at scale. Following a period of negotiations, we announced on the NZX on ninth of February that we have entered into, subject to shareholder approval today, a long-term lease with Sølvtrans, a highly respected Norwegian wellboat operator. Onto the specifics of the vessel.
I'm gonna play this video in the background while I talk a bit about the Ronja King. Firstly, you'll notice the name Ronja King. We were given the opportunity to add to the traditional name, Ronja, which represents the founder's two children, Robin and Anja, and wanted to include an identifiable name that connects the vessel to our company and unique species. The Ronja King is 57 meters long, has a well volume capacity of 1,000 cubic meters spread across two well tanks and a gross tonnage volume of 1,276 tons. Sølvtrans is internationally recognized and currently serves the Tasmanian salmon sector. With the largest share of the global wellboat market, their expertise and reliability are well established.
We are confident that a long-term lease with Sølvtrans will provide operational and certainty and commercial stability, delivering superior value and increased security for our shareholders. Importantly, this leasing model offers us greater flexibility as our business grows, allowing us to upsize to a larger vessel when required, without committing to an outright purchase at this stage. To recap the financial details from the notice of meeting, all annual lease payments for the wellboat will be funded from NZKSS working capital and cash flow, ensuring financial prudence and stability. This is the vessel in the dry dock while it was being classed for international survey. I'll just talk about the progress on our growth plan.
So the wellboat is a critical piece of future infrastructure to unlock growth, but in the last reporting period, we've also made significant progress in implementing our growth strategy and making wise investments in key projects, both in the ocean and on land. Our Blue Endeavour trial pens were assembled and towed to Waikawa. Our mooring grid installation is underway, and while we initially experienced delays, we are now making great progress, with 31 of the total 44 moorings in place. Although I note we only need 36 to proceed with the first two pens. We are preparing for the tow out of the pens to Blue Endeavour in the next month or so, and the mooring grid delays have meant that our Blue Endeavour fish have spent the summer at our inshore farms.
We are pleased to report they are growing nicely and are ready to be moved out, hopefully via a new wellboat, once the pens are in place. And finally, a baseline monitoring period at Blue Endeavour is now complete. During the reporting period, we made a further significant investments in supporting infrastructure. Our current Bullen Street factory is nearing its sustainable capacity of around 9,000 tonnes, and we have moved to secure additional future processing capacity. In October 2025, we completed the purchase of the site in Cloudy Bay Business Park in Blenheim for NZD 8.1 million to support future processing needs as volumes scale with Blue Endeavour. We completed and received the MV Whakanui, our dedicated service vessel, in October, and I'll play this back, this video in the background, while I talk to that.
The vessel was built in Vietnam and arrived via a lift-and-shift vessel, as seen in this video. Whakanui is now in Picton and set to underpin daily operations such as feed logistics, power, monitoring, and personnel support. The video also shows some of the footage of the tautoko whakanui, or the ceremony with Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Kuia, who gifted us the name Whakanui. The name Whakanui honours the pūrākau of Te Wheke-ā-Muturangi and the waters of where Whakanui will be operating. We also had the pleasure of hosting some Marlborough Council members and other leaders on a tour of Whakanui, as shown in the video.
So that's it down at the port, and this was a day where we hosted the Marlborough Council out on the boat, with John Boswell, CEO, various Councillors, with CEO of Port Marlborough on board. It's quite a day, because the vessel, when you actually get on board, is. It's a lot bigger than it actually looks in the videos. It's a big vessel with a lot of technical capacity built into it. And the Westshore warehouse project, which saw us enter into a feed storage and delivery contract with Port Marlborough, which will see a 3,200 square meter purpose-built warehouse constructed on the port side.
This will bring significant benefits, as the feed will arrive directly at Picton once this is completed early this year, and that will allow loading of the feed directly to the feed barge from the warehouse and eliminate several hundred truck trips every year from Nelson to Marlborough, removing the associated CO2 emissions. It is very rewarding to see how our growth and investments are also the catalyst for other growth and benefits in our regional economies. I'll turn now to the markets. We continue to be a brand-led company, and we view our premiumization of the global and domestic stage as very important. Our strategic growth markets remain North America, China, and Australia, and New Zealand remains vital as our home market, although realistically, New Zealand's growth will likely be subdued. Japan is important to maintain valued relationships and distribution access for future growth opportunities.
With future additional supply coming from inshore utilization and Blue Endeavour, we see pathways to expand premium food service and retail channels, including higher-end China retail, and pushing deeper into US and Australasian, food service and retail. The next slide will give a flavor of some of the investments we've been making into these key markets. China. The video I'm about to share here is of the Ahi restaurant pop-up in W Shanghai on the Bund in November last year. From Aotearoa to the bustling city of Shanghai, the Ahi pop-up restaurant was a celebration of Kiwi hospitality, craft, and connection through food and beverage. This is a private hosting event which was coordinated by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to showcase New Zealand produce, and featuring our Regal King Salmon as one of the main components of a curated New Zealand dining experience.
The New Zealand Ambassador, Minister of Trade Todd McClay, NZTE Regional Director joined Regal's team at the table for their meal. We had several potential food service partners were introduced through the pop-up, including fine dining restaurants like Ting by FJ and Obscura, iconic Bund venues like W Hotel, Waldorf Hotel, The Roosevelt, and trending Western restaurant groups like Bella Vita Group and Muse Group. The pop-up served as a strong introduction for Regal into Shanghai's premium food service scene.
So Regal King Salmon cooked in the wood-fired oven. Chinese caviar with New Zealand rata, that's really important. The rata grows all around where the salmon is farmed. A little butter sauce made with koji and basically stir-fried wok vegetables from the market. That's actually really good. The salmon, the caviar, it's really, really elegant.
I'm sure you'll agree that was a very premium experience, created for us by NZTE, and it has led to very strong leads for some significant business development opportunities in China. It's just a pity we don't have more volume for that market right now, but the team is working on securing those relationships for the coming months when the volume does start to ramp. North America. Ōra King continues to be influential in the world of fine dining, particularly in the US. In September, we attended North America's 50 Best Restaurant Awards in Las Vegas, and like all things American, it's promoted as the world's best 50 restaurants. As the first New Zealand sponsor at this event, we promoted our Ōra King brand and the wider New Zealand story to North America's best chefs.
The video here showcases the event, including a stunning statue of an Ōra King, an Ōra Tyee , encased in ice. Excellent. New Zealand, and to our very important domestic market, we are very fortunate to have a great relationship with Al Brown, who has been a consistent advocate of our Regal King Salmon. Al Brown is one of New Zealand's most celebrated chefs and restaurateurs, incredibly approachable, particularly for mainstream mass consumers. As an ambassador for Regal, Al Brown shares his love of authentic, generous, generous hospitality while championing Regal's vision of accessible, everyday gourmet eating. Here's a quick clip of Al's launch of his social media series, which we are receiving great engagement on.
Hey, you lot! It's Al here. Welcome to my test kitchen in the city. I have this mission to get more salmon into people's lives. Ooh, man, absolutely magnificent. I'm a massive fan of the Regal King Salmon brand. I'm gonna show you a bunch of recipes using their dips. They're hot, they're cold, they're portions. This is your summer go-to for sure. So watch this. Let's get into it. You can thank me later.
I've certainly been using his barbecue tips pretty extensively over summer. And if you do see the Regal portions in the Woolworths stores, get into them. They're absolutely fantastic product. It's probably our highest spec product that we produce. Just going to talk now about relationships, incredibly important to us. Alongside investing in our brands, we've continued to strengthen our relationships with government, with iwi, with science institutes, with customers, media, education providers, and others. And this slide has just a few examples of these initiatives. From the left last year, we were honored to be given, gifted the name Whakanui by Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Kuia for a specialized service vessel reflecting shared purpose and place.
The next image is of NZKS's keynote speech following the Honorable Minister Jones at the Aquaculture New Zealand conference last year. Grant and Richard did a fantastic job at that conference. At our last ASM, we heard the call to continue to invest further energy into our communications with both investors and beyond. In this reporting period, we've put significant efforts into increasing our public profile through a range of channels, including traditional media, social media, panel presentations, and conferences. We partnered with international aquaculture communicator James Sibley, who created two short-form documentaries about our farming practices and company. I'm just going to play the video first, and then I'll talk a little bit more about just how much engagement we got.
Just look at that water. Oh, yeah, there's salmon here, too. King salmon, almost 80,000 in every pen. Welcome to episode 3 of Aquaculture in New Zealand. Last video, we followed New Zealand King Salmon's fish from broodstock to smolts. Now we're out in the Marlborough Sounds to see the other half of salmon farming, seawater. At sea, king salmon are raised in massive pens like this. Each one here is around 25,000 cubic meters in volume. That is a lot of water, and that's also a lot of space. It's a good thing, since there's a lot of fish. Even so, each pen is at around 1%-2% density, depending on how big the fish are. It seems like an ideal stocking for these shoaling species, like kings. Too many fish in a farm, and they might be stressed out with reduced water quality.
Too few, and they could be stressed out because they don't have a shoal.
King salmon is really unique, so we're less than 1% of the world's salmon, so really, really unique. New Zealand actually farms about 70% of the world's King salmon.
King salmon can be trickier than Atlantic salmon, requiring unique feed formulations and precise water quality parameters. But something hugely beneficial here is that New Zealand, as a country, does not have sea lice at all. It's an issue that most other salmon farmers around the world have put a lot of time and money into mitigating. Now, New Zealand King Salmon also recently finished a summer diet trial with promising results. Tailored to warming waters, this diet should help the fish through the warmest months. Fish first come to sea at around 100 grams, and over the next year and a half, they'll grow up to 4 or 5 kilos. They're very efficient feeders, too. They don't fight gravity. They're cold-blooded. Most of the food they eat turns right into delicious fish.
At harvest, the highest quality fish are sold as Ōra King salmon into food service channels around the world. These can be prepared in a number of ways. I like it best as a sashimi or a tartare, but you really can't go wrong. That is amazing! That is incredible. And talk about a show. This fish presents like no other. Anyways, this company has a few inshore farms like this, but they've recently been looking to the open seas. Did I hear that you're going offshore?
So we've got a new site development that we've just started. It's called Blue Endeavour. That's located 7 kilometers northwest of Cape Lambert, and we've got the ability to grow 10,000 tons of fish out there. It's the first open ocean farm that New Zealand has had, so I want to put a couple of pens out there, run a couple of cycles in it, just prove the concept, show that we can operate it and do all, do all that properly, and then we're going to slowly expand that from there. So really quite exciting.
How cool is that? Farming King salmon in the open ocean. To us aquaculture nerds, this is a huge deal, and I'm excited to see how these pilot pens go. This could reinvent fish farming. That's New Zealand King Salmon. There's so much more to see, but we must continue. Next time, we're heading further south. Stay tuned.
So that was James Sibley. He is a North American social media influencer specializing in aquaculture. That's the people who follow him is all people who like seafood. And those videos that he did for us received over 1.5 million views. That's just incredible reach that's able to be achieved through that sort of channel. It's a great way to get exposure to a younger audience, which helps us to maintain transparency and build our social license. And we continue contributing to the sector, including participation in seafood integrated scenarios work which weaved climate, nature, and te reo Māori into practical frameworks and progressed modern slavery reporting in line with the Australian Modern Slavery Act.
While traditional media is increasingly becoming user pays, we continue to proactively engage with media outlets to ensure we achieve good, accurate coverage. This year, we are refreshing our corporate website and kicking off a new quarterly update newsletter, which will give more frequent updates on our company, news and stories. The sign-up information was on the front page of the notice of meeting, and there is a sign-up form here as well that we can assist you with after the ASM. Sustainability. We released our GHG, or greenhouse gas, statement for the eight-month reporting period to thirtieth of September 2025, and the report discloses our Scope one, two, and three GHG emissions, in which limited assurance was obtained across all three scopes. Our absolute emissions are down from the previous reporting period, driven, driven from this change in balance state.
The reduced harvest impacted our intensity metric, with less harvested biomass to spread across the more fixed business as usual GHG emissions. We've progressed high-value protein recovery by capturing kidney line protein for nutrient-rich fish meal and non-salmon applications, and have continued to work on the research and development of our remaining raw materials. As highlighted during the 30 September 2025 results, with the proposed changes to the climate reporting threshold, NZKS will no longer be a climate reporting entity. As a result of this change, NZKS no longer prepares or files climate-related disclosures. Instead, we have produced an annual GHG statement, as noted above, and from FY 2026 onwards, NZKS intends to prepare a GHG statement and disclose our scope one, two, and three emissions and obtain a level of assurance over scope one and two emissions.
This will enable us to continue to identify opportunities to improve our carbon intensity as the business pursues our long-term growth opportunities. Actually, before I get to the end, I want to go back to that slide that I missed, because I thought the page of my notes would turn up later on in the presentation, and it hasn't. It's wandered off. It's probably buying the tickets. Yeah. It speaks to the sort of activities that we're implementing in the farms over the summer period, and the thing with aquaculture is there's no quick fix. It takes a long time to work out what the core issues are, and then you've got to work out what you're going to do about it and make the investments.
And depending on where you're investing, if you're investing on the hatchery side, it takes 3 years to go from a brood stock to an egg. And if you're investing on the farm side, it's another 2.5-3 years to go from an egg to a harvested fish. So you can have an incredibly long investment cycle to play through before you've actually tackled the issue that you're trying to, trying to deal with. And the team has been working for many years on solutions to some of the challenges that we've been experiencing. Now, the challenges morph year on year on year. Nature keeps changing the game a bit, but we are, in my view, catching up very quickly, and we might even be getting our nose slightly in front of the challenges as we're seeing so far this summer.
The first one is the summer feed. So we've gone back to an old-school diet, from about 20 years ago. But it's not an easy decision to get there. To do that, we had to build trial pens at Ruakaka facility, because the last thing you want to do is play around with an experimental feed in a commercial pen and have it not work. Then you've really compounded a problem. So we built these trial pens, did the trial over a summer period, evaluated the results, and then you've got to commercialize it. So that's 2 years right there. We're now deploying that summer diet, which, by the way, costs 22% more, so it's not a cheap exercise. You want to be really confident in the math. But the results in the trial pen were so outstanding, it's an absolute no-brainer.
Even if a trial pen doesn't scale all the way through to commercial pens, it only has to get part of the way there, and we're well ahead of the game. I suspect it's one of the things that's putting the fish into such good condition that they're in right now and sets them up for that very challenging summer period. Now, we've still got 6-8 weeks of that high-risk period to go through, so hopefully, I haven't just put the commentator's curse on it, but that's one of the strategies that is being deployed right now. Very pleased with the way that's going. We're continuing to work on vaccine developments. We vaccinate fish in the hatcheries, and that gives them about 6 months protection.
Now, they're at sea for, you know, closer to 2 years, 2.5 years, and so the vaccines wear off. But by continuing to work on how we can improve the efficacy of vaccines, that will reduce, potentially the requirement for therapeutics if we ever need to deploy them in the future. So vaccine development remains a key focus for us, but that's not a quick fix. That takes several years to refine, but there's some exciting progress being made on that front. Therapeutic availability, with the review of conditions of the high-flow sites, 6 of our 8 operating farms, we now have the ability to deploy therapeutics and specifically antibiotics if the fish require it, and I have no qualms about putting fish health first and foremost.
We've engaged with our customer base on that, made sure they really understood why we're doing it and how we monitor residual levels in the fish afterwards. And once the customers understood all of that, they have been very supportive of promoting fish health first, and then, of course, I ask, "Does that also mean better supply stability?" So, it's a double, double win. So that's in the back, in the back pocket when it's needed, only at direction of our fish vet, Zac, if he detects a bacterial infection and believes that the fish would benefit from such a treatment, then we will deploy. And the final one on there is about optimizing smolt production.
So the team's working hard on developing a pilot RAS system, which will be the first in the world to be using a King salmon. It's technology widely used for Atlantic salmon, but as always, King salmon are different and they're like thoroughbred racehorses. They are the most finicky, so we have to prove it in a pilot trial environment, make sure we understand all the parameters of how to operate that specifically for King salmon. But we know that brackish water is a silver bullet for issues of failed smoltification. So in a RAS system, we can control all the parameters of water quality, including putting turning the water to being brackish water.
So we'll be doing those trials while we hopefully get that under construction very shortly, and later next year, we'll have fish in a pilot RAS and learning all the benefits of that before scaling that operation up. And then finally, breeding programs. So we have been doing a lot of work on thermotolerance. It's a strategy that is widely used in other primary industries. It's been very successfully used for Atlantic salmon. We've been very fortunate to have Cawthron Institute, based here in Nelson, who have been able to support us on this, on this trial work. We have identified families that have very high thermotolerance. We've now made the connection that thermotolerance does translate to survivability, because there's, you know, not necessarily a clear connection, so we've proven that up.
This is actually the first year that we have fish at sea that have been selected for some thermotolerance traits. Again, that may be what's helping to contribute to, so far, touch a lot of wood, a very good summer performance. But we are now engaging in genomics, and genomics, to be clear, is the mapping of all the genome sequences of a fish. It is not anything to do with gene editing or snipping. We are not engaging in any form of gene modification, but enables us to accelerate by up to 30% the genetic gains that we can make from pedigree breeding programs. What does that mean? Well, the scientists tell us that we should be able to add about 0.3 degrees of thermotolerance to a fish each generation, which is each 3 years.
So over a ten-year period, we're aiming to add about one degree of thermotolerance to our fish, which means we should be able to adapt the fish faster than the seas are warming. So that's why we're confident we are starting to get ahead of ahead of the curve. None of these things, by their own right, are, is a silver bullet, but when you add them all together, we're starting to get a compounding effect. And by far, the biggest advancement will be the introduction of a wellboat, which then has all of the benefits of not only being able to put fish in the right farms at the right time, unlocking feed discharge that we currently can't utilize, but significant reduction in biosecurity risk.
So, one of the benefits of getting to a single year class is that every farm will be able to have a fallow period, and after one month, the pathogen loading around the farm reduces by 80% back towards the background pathogen loading of the natural environment, and after three months, you're basically at the background loading. So it's a very significant step forward in fish health management. So those three things - those three sort of buckets, we've got a lot of work streams going on in each of them, and they're all adding up to making a real difference right now. So I'll just come back to finish off with the outlook for the - As much as I like those videos, we've seen them. So it is a tough business, aquaculture, and it's often two steps forward and half a step back.
But directionally, we are building resilience into the business year by year. And this summer has been a major test of our fish health tools and feeding strategies because there is no doubt there is a marine heatwave out there. Even though we don't see it on the land, it's been a pretty miserable summer for us land-based people, but for the fish, it's been a tough summer. So this is a really serious proof point for the business, and particularly for the fish who are at Waihinau, which were the fish that were going to be out at Blue Endeavour earlier on, but are now having the summer at Waihinau. They are doing well, and that's probably the strongest proof point we have, is that just how well these initiatives are helping the fish.
We will continue exercising patience and caution while we prove out Blue Endeavour. We are focused on establishing a solid platform before we start scaling investments out there, and we are looking to build shareholder confidence for those future investments. Direction of travel hasn't changed. It's about healthier fish, stronger operations, and a scalable offshore platform that can unlock long-term transformational growth for the company. Previously, we have been cautiously optimistic about our future growth prospects, and as we progress through this summer period, this is a very deliberate tonal shift that we are increasingly confident without being overly confident that the work undertaken over the past few years is stabilizing the core operations and laying the foundation for growth. So thank you for your trust, your partnership, and belief in the future of New Zealand King Salmon.
Together, we are building a stronger, more resilient company and contributing to a healthier tomorrow for our communities and environment. Nō reira, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, ka mutu. So now I'll move to questions. And I'll chair this part of the meeting. So, do we want to take questions from the floor first, and then we'll see if we've got online questions to answer as well? So if you fire away with any questions, we'll give it the best shot of answering. We've got the team of experts here at the ready to support anything I don't know, which will be quite a lot. Oliver.
Thank you. It's Oliver here from NZSA. So you talked about those three key initiatives, just in terms of improving fish health and introducing some thermotolerance of the breeding stock, and so on. So I guess, freed from the shackles of climate reporting, what are the sort of key external environmental metrics that become important or that you think are important for investors to consider, and for you to disclose in helping to assess the efficacy of their investment? So you already report fish mortality, for example. Are there any other key external metrics that you could look at disclosing?
Well, I think the ability to deliver the forecast harvest biomass is the most important metric. If we keep the fish alive and growing well, the rest of the business largely looks after itself. This business does not have a demand challenge; we have a supply challenge. And so really, the most important metric for me in the business is fish health. And the farm guys, they have a whole raft of KPIs, farm by farm, that are tracked on a daily basis as to how the fish are going, how the farms are being managed. And we get all of that right, that ladders up to the most important outcome: have we delivered the forecast biomass growth for the year? And that's really what it comes down to.
Other metrics like feed conversion ratios and mortality and so on, they're all very important, and they will shape the bottom line result, but by far, the overwhelming result is biomass. If a fish needs an extra bit of feed to get to survive and get to grow well and get to that extra biomass, then that math is always gonna win every time.
Thanks.
So, Grant, have you got anything else you would add to that in terms of what you consider to be critical? Stand.
Yeah, thanks, Carl. Obviously, from a daily basis, we're always going to be looking at feed volumes, mortality numbers. We're looking, you know, we have a forecast that there was summer. Although I think a lot of people always go: "How's summer looking? What's the weather like?" We always assume it's gonna be a bad summer. I think that's the logic. If it's a good summer, it's just a bonus. You know, over the years, you know, we're not climate deniers. We know that things have got warmer. And, you know, if you look through the data, the last 8 years are certainly quite a lot warmer than the previous 20.
And it's for us, it's around ensuring we've got the right strategies in place to mitigate that as best we can, and that's where the wellboat's actually most transformational. That means that, you know, we won't have any fish sitting in warm water sites over summer at all going forward, which is a really nice change. But yeah, it's mainly it is very much feeding is a lead indicator for us and probably one of the key ones. When feed, you know, mortality is a lag indicator, so that's, you know, things have already gone wrong at that particular point. So for us, it's always around looking at what we can do in advance. So feed is probably number one.
The fish are feeding very strongly right now, so that's a lead indicator. Paul. Now we'll get you a mic, just to be sure we can hear.
Thank you very much, Carl. Firstly, can I congratulate you and the team on the presentations, and what I'm seeing there. It does represent a paradigm change of resilience and strength that's going forward. You know, the future is always, ponderable. This is a industry which, is challenging, and at the same time, character-building. I've got enough character, thank you very much. I'd like to get some money. So the three questions are this: the Ronja King, you said on your presentation that would represent the ability for a further 2,000 tons. There are 10,000 tons capacity at Blue Endeavour. Does that mean we need another four Ronja Kings?
Can you tell us what it would cost to buy, or not the cost to buy, because that would be commercial, but how long would it take to get a payback if you had bought the Ronja King outright?
Well, okay. Don't encourage Grant about four more wellboats. Grant, I'm gonna actually hand that one to you, if you want to have a go at that, and perhaps Andrew might support.
Yeah, no, no problem. So in terms of the numbers for the wellboat, so the wellboat is 1,000 cubic meters, so it's a relatively smaller wellboat on the world scale. So if you look at the four wellboats that are operating in Tasmania, the smallest wellboat there is about 3,500 cubic meters in size, moving up to 7,500 cubic meters in size. For a bit of scale and context on that, our 1,000 cubic meter wellboat, at the moment, we deliver our smolt to sea via tankers. The wellboat is the equivalent of 40 smolt tankers. So that's give an idea of the general scale. Now we don't need an additional four wellboats for Blue Endeavour.
Hopefully, as we grow, maybe, maybe I can get a bigger one. The logic here is that it provides the opportunity for us to grow an additional 2,000 tonnes at inshore. It brings our inshore farming capacity to approximately 10,000 tonnes G&G, which is really nice. Y ou still have to be able to move all those fish around. So when you change our farming model to having a nursery site and grow-out sites, every fish actually go, spends time and goes through the wellboat, and then those fish will then head out, and some of those fish will go out to Blue Endeavour. I t's not a harvest vessel, so it doesn't get used in the harvest operations.
But for Blue Endeavour, it will be used to relocate the harvest fish back into a inshore farm, 'cause obviously Blue Endeavour being an open ocean site, there's gonna be enough days out there where we can't harvest. And I'm reliably informed that, you know, if I have 25% of the days where I'm not harvesting, this is not good for my career. So we'll relocate them back inshore, and harvest from there. As we grow, once we get to in excess of 15,000 tonnes, we will need a larger boat, no question about it. And in terms of and one of the, in terms of the question, I'll pass to Andrew, 'cause he's got the finances things.
Yeah. Okay, well, I'll put my finance hat on. And he, he's close enough to hit me. One of the things we've got there, too, is in terms of the, the buy and lease model. Very, very few wellboats are owned by the companies around the world. They're virtually always leased for a start. And one, it's a lot of capital upfront to purchase a wellboat. Two, we're not, we're not leasing the boat, we're leasing a service, and I think that's one of the key aspects. It comes fully staffed, and it comes with experienced staff. These are highly technical vessels, that we don't, we don't want to be the ones that are just standing there, running them, trying to, like, work out how to do it, press the wrong buttons, and we kill all the fish.
So, it does come with Norwegian captains in play. It's a fully staffed vessel as we go through the process. In terms of its financial paybacks and details, I will pass that one over.
Yeah, I think, and as Grant said, the financial payback becomes a bit hypothetical because of the risk reduction from leasing. We're getting a service, we're getting the technical expertise to go with that. So buying was not really an option on the table for us. We did look at the pricing of wellboats around the world to make sure that the lease option was not excessively expensive. And I think if you take it on about 2,000 tonnes, the comparable buy would be about a 2-year payback. So it's a pretty quick return. That being said, we're not in the infrastructure owning game, we're in the fish farming game, and so a lease was always gonna make more sense given our cost of capital.
Yeah. Worth just expanding on that. I think, you know, if our cost of capital is closer to 15, it's not exactly 15, but closer to that, cost of capital for an infrastructure company such as Sølvtrans is more like 7, 7.5. And so they will be able to operate a boat, buy a boat at a much lower cost than for us to buy a boat. That's why it's far better for us to deploy capital into aquaculture, fish farming, than owning pieces of infrastructure like a wellboat, and that's why so few of them are owned. It also does give us the ability to upgrade at a point down the track to a larger vessel, because, as Grant said, at a certain point in time, a 1,000 tonne boat just won't be big enough.
I think I did it right.
I think you did.
Well, I just want to get the information out. This, the next question was for Grant, I think. 60% of our exports go to the U.S. That's always been, we've been a global leader in value for money and for fish pie. Have Trump's tariff tantrums made much difference to their positioning and pricing in the U.S.? Because, obviously, we are now at a 5% disadvantage, I think, to Australia.
I'll throw that one to Grant, but obviously Australia doesn't have any King salmon.
Yeah. Thank you, Paul. It's a question that comes up quite a bit about the impact of the tariffs. Now, for us, this is salmon, or we put through a price increase notification in December of 2024, for the exact day that the tariffs were also taking effect. We did not know that at the time, so we had a 5% price increase going through at that time, and coincided, of course, with a 10%, at that time, 10% tariff. We also had, at that exact same time, a reduction in our supply. So if you look at it on a chart, you will see a tariff initiation date and an immediate impact on our volume.
But there's a number of other things that were impacting at that time, and we were fully oversubscribed of our volume. We were on allocation into all markets, including North America. I think the best metric then that we can use and then another further 5% tariff came through at a later date. So, there was quite an increase in pricing that went into North America. However, the best metric I think that we can use is right now like today and, through our forecast going forward, we are selling at a rate either equal to or higher than pre-tariff times. So that might be the easiest and best metric to measure the impact of tariffs. So, just a strong indicator of the amount of inflation that they've, yeah, been impacted on in North America d oesn't seem to affect their buying.
Sorry, holding the line of the questioning, but the final one is for Mark. Today, we are re-electing two of our distinguished directors. One with great experience and wisdom, and the other with great passion for the science around our business. We may have a vacancy still on the board. I'm not sure about that. If so, we could create one. Has the board given any consideration to appointing a director from overseas in the aquaculture industry, primarily in the Northern Hemisphere? A younger Mark Asman, but in the Northern Hemisphere from someone like Mowi.
So in terms of board composition, yes, we have. We do have a vacancy on the board with the resignation of Carol Chen, who represented China Resources. China Resources don't get a director through their shareholding, but they have had one by
Grant's invite by invitation of the board and support from the shareholders. So, you know, that position is still available, and I think you weren't here at the start. We're meeting with the new China Resources people, probably in May or June, and we'll consider that. But to your question, your specific question, have we considered appointing to the main board somebody with salmon or aquaculture experience? No, not as such. We have a subcommittee of the board that is involved in, you know, the aquaculture side of our business, so working very closely with Grant and his team on a monthly basis, reviewing performance initiatives. So, you know, deeply involved in the fish side, the aquaculture side, and we always have an external expert on that committee. It was Stewart Hawthorn, who was based up in the UK.
He has now come down to New Zealand and is running at Mt. Cook, Akaroa, apologies. We've got Mark Asman, who has significant aquaculture experience from Tasmania. So we think that's the right place from a governance point of view, to have the deep aquaculture expertise, because that is where they have the ability to work directly with the team and really kind of, yeah, add their value as aquaculture experts. You know, the board has to deal with a whole lot of more general matters. So, you know, whether, you know, from a skills matrix point of view, it makes sense to have, yeah, an absolute aquaculture expert on the main board. You know, the board's of the view that that is not critical, but we've got the expertise from a governance level, yeah, in the committee that is the most, you know, involved in that.
Just to extend Paul's question a little in terms of those board skills. So I think we've talked before this meeting, Mark, around the lack of the board skills disclosure coming through in NZK's disclosures this year. Certainly from a board composition perspective, you do have that potential vacancy. So I guess the first part is, if aquaculture is not something you're looking for at the board, because you have that through external expertise, what is- what are the sorts of skills you're looking for? And then how do you think the skills required by the board will evolve, given the growth strategy that you've got?
Yep. So we do run an assessment of the experiences and the skills that are required for governance. You know, they tend to be governance expertise, commercial, sales and marketing, technology, relationships, diversity. There's a whole range of them, and we assess our board against those. We haven't, this year, disclosed our assessment of each individual on each of the capabilities. Not to say we won't do that in the future. Our most recent appointment replacement was Paul Steer, and we brought Paul Munro on board, and one of the things that we identified at that appointment time was we needed expertise in large capital project management with our growth.
You know, yeah, a really strong part of Paul's experiences and background was in, you know, being involved in governance, in an exec capacity around, you know, significant capital projects, and so we added that skill there. Yeah, I think that we've got good market skills through, particularly Victoria Taylor. You know, we've got good salmon skills at the board level through Catriona. Jack's been involved in the industry for 30 years, Jack, so while Jack is not an aquaculturist, he has, you know, a deep set of experiences in the industry.
As we go forward and we get the growth, the supply side growth initiatives in place, we'll probably need more market sort of experience and expertise around the board as we look to need to grow our total sales from circa 7,000 or 8,000 to 12,000 to 15,000. You know, the international market, consumer, food service, wholesale, distribution, logistics, I suspect that those sort of skills and experiences will start to lift up, and we'll address that, as and when the time is appropriate.
And we'll look forward to that disclosure and n arrative around those requirements. Thank you. Disclosures are always being reviewed. Yeah, it's a moving, you know, it is a moving issue, and so we do review. We don't always make changes that, you know, some quarters may be wishing for, but we do review, and we do consider. Thank you.
Very good. Any more? Oh, got a couple more questions down, one down the front here. Oh, okay.
With the wellboat utilization, how will you control not transferring pathogens or disease from a sick site to what was a well site?
Yeah, great question. Grant or Zac?
Well, I'll start with one, and then I'll pass to Zac. It's one of the great things about the wellboat is actually this is exactly what it's designed to do. So you've not only have you got, you know, you've got the ability to have closed or open systems, so when the system is open, it can actually bring in water from the environment. When it's closed, it actually is completely closed and is operating through. It also is built in with complete disinfection systems in there as well. So it can build, make its own ozone, make its own oxygen, strip CO2 from it. It's part of the fertilization that's in there. And then obviously, we've got to have a very regimented disinfection cleaning regime for the vessel as well.
Anything to add?
Yeah, the one thing I'll add is just the fish themselves get reviewed ahead of transfer. So myself or someone on my team, or typically both of us, will go within 30 days of transfer, take a look at the fish, take samples, convince ourselves that they're healthy, assuming they are, and then issue a statement of fitness for transport. If they're not, that's where we have the therapeutants. That's a tool that we now have on hand. We know that fish transfers are stressful, no matter how well we do it. So if we've got a population that's compromised ahead of time, that will influence the decision to use or not use a therapeutant, and we would then only transfer fish that have been protected by that, so.
M y question is probably for Grant. I think it's an operational question around the wellboat. You've got one wellboat. I suggest you might need. Yeah, I think you might need two. My question is around the risk management to do with having a single vessel and the potential for it to break down or otherwise become unavailable.
Very good question, and one that's probably spent quite a lot of time with us discussing from a risk perspective. And look, in New Zealand, you know, it's one that's possible to mitigate completely, just purely due to the fact, obviously, you know, we are relatively isolated in this country, and obviously even the entire New Zealand country's requirements would be for one wellboat at the moment. We are able to withstand a period of a couple of months with the wellboat being down and it not to have a massive impact to us, so that's really important. You know, longer than that, it does become, you know, we are then to scratch around for plan B and C.
One of the great things actually in our modeling is, we don't actually need to utilize the vessel, January, February, March, so it allows a nice proactive maintenance regime that's in place. Sølvtrans already have operational bases in New Zealand because, interestingly enough, three of the four Tasmanian wellboats currently get serviced in Lyttelton. And so that's where the vessel will be serviced. Turns out that Lyttelton, t hey had two choices in Tasmania, Lyttelton or Fremantle. Lyttelton's closer. So, and the other vessel, which doesn't come here, is just too large, it has to go to Singapore.
So that part is in play, so obviously, yeah, we've got to have maintenance times and work around to go through, and then there's a rather long list of critical spare parts that will be kept in Picton, as opposed to having to be flown out, in essence. So, very experienced operators, they know what's going to likely go wrong with these vessels and what are the most likely scenarios are. We've gone through the timeframe that we can handle a vessel being down, but, you know, proactive maintenance is going to be the key. And then, as I say, in the long run, as we and others in the industry grow, you know, the ability to get a new vessel will be there.
We'd have, you know, we have got replacement vessel, you know, in the contract, but it's not going to be quick to get here, so it would still cause us a significant problem.
It's a great question, and I guess the other thing is Norwegians look after their boats very well. You know, it's in their blood, literally. So, the vessel is in very good condition, but you've got to have a great preventative maintenance program for exactly that, because if it did go down for an extended period, then it does become problematic. But we do have buffer that, depending on when it happens, we do have time to get it serviced. Any other questions from the room? I know there's potentially some online questions. Yep, we've got online questions as well. Okay, shall we take some of the online ones?
Just waiting for my mic. Great! Okay, so I'm down the back here, and I'm just going to read out the questions that we've received online or prior to the ASM starting. The first one is from Victor Lin. As a shareholder, I'm extremely pleased with the company's strategy by doubling down on the core. I'm sure the cost benefits and quality of the fish will exponentially improve in the future. As we are moving towards a new method of farming in the ocean, how has NZ King Salmon considered the potential operating risks in this area? For example, fish escaping from the pen due to the damage from wild weather.
I know that one on, that one I'm passing to, to Grant. He'll probably talk about engineering solutions.
Yeah, feeling a bit crazy at the moment. Yeah, look, so you can never 100% eliminate these risks. We can't pretend that we would. But there's all the work that goes in place upfront with regard to the selection of the equipment, the engineering certification, the sign-offs that are done, and so forth. So the equipment that we're using out at Blue Endeavour, we've partnered with Scale AQ. You know, they are one of the world leaders in open ocean farming. We've visited these sites and sites that are at least as rough, if not rougher, than the Blue Endeavour site. All of the engineering equipment has to be put into class and be certified off. Same for the mooring gears.
The nets that we've purchased that are going in there are the strongest nets that we've ever purchased in terms of the strength and, and the breaking strains that exist on that, to go through. So, this is proven overseas to, you know, to, you know, not result in any fish escapes and, and not result in any damage. As I state, you can never 100% lock it down and say it will never occur. But we're absolutely doing our due diligence in terms of ensuring we're getting the right engineering sign-offs, and we're not the, you know, we're not the first mouse here, we're the second mouse going in for it.
Yeah, and that, and that's very important, and that's why we're doing a pilot. You know, 2 pens out there, repeat it a few times, get really confident in, in knowing how to operate that kind of infrastructure and that kind of environment before we start scaling that up and then amplifying the investment and the risks.
Actually, one thing I would say is, like, probably one of the questions that get asked the most is, you know, what about the gear, it breaking, it floating away? That's not what keeps me up at night in terms of Blue Endeavour. The engineering side is so well proven and so well managed, that's not the risk factor. For me, it's always gonna be about how the fish go in the water as opposed to the infrastructure.
Okay, I'll move on to the next question online. This is from Stephen David Maine: Thank you for offering a genuine hybrid AGM this year, with both online questions and online voting. Will a full copy of the AGM webcast be published on your website for the benefit of shareholders unable to watch live, even if some of the debate is a little uncomfortable for the board?
Mon, I'll let you answer your own question then.
Fantastic. Thank you. Yes, we always make the full webcast video available on our website, and this will be up within the next 24 hours. Thank you. Okay. Next one from David, Stephen David Maine again. At next year's AGM, could you please disclose the proxy position to the ASX, NZX earlier, along with the formal addresses? This would allow for a more fully informed debate. That's the first question.
I don't quite understand it. Monique do you understand the question?
Yes, I do. So obviously, we received some votes in advance, the proxies, so we can make those available ahead of time if people require that. But I guess the point probably there was, have there been any material protests against either of the directors up for election today or the wellboat related party transaction? And to date, there has been no significant feedback on any of the resolutions.
Great, I'll move on to the next one. This one's got a few parts, Carl, so buckle in. This one's from Stephen David Maine : Tasmanian salmon farming remains a big political and ESG issue in Australia. Indeed, Australia's biggest supermarket companies, Woolworths, suffered a 32% protest vote on a hostile salmon-related shareholder resolution at its AGM in November last year. How is the political and investor debate in New Zealand different from what has played out in Tasmania in recent years, and does the Chair believe Tasmania's salmon industry is sustainable?
Look, I don't have a view on the Tasmanian salmon industry's sustainability. So, you know, I don't have a view. They have issues, you know, they're working through those issues. You know, there's a lot of focus on it. Yeah, personally, it's not my place to speculate on, you know, how that might play out. Yeah, I'm focused on our industry, our business, and yeah, we have a good, strong future here.
Thank you.
I'll just add to that. It just illustrates the importance of the work that our team does on building community connections and engagement at all levels, whether it be with education institutions, so bringing through young people through schools, getting them to understand aquaculture. We do a lot of work with Queen Charlotte College on their aquaculture studies program. We have scholarships with NMIT in aquaculture. We do a lot of work with local iwi to make sure we understand their perspectives, and they understand our perspectives. We've had some really good progress on that front in the last few years. We work closely with the regional councils, work closely with government, with supporting institutions like NZTE, Invest New Zealand, MPI.
So we're really working hard on all of those relationships and ensuring the communities understand that we are a key part of rural New Zealand, and the multiplier effect of our business and the jobs that it creates is really significant. So I think maintaining social license is really front of mind, because one of the challenges in Tasmania is it's gone from, I don't know, 15 years ago, I think it was probably about 30,000 tons, and now it's closer to 100,000 tons. So it's had this huge increase in growth, and it just perhaps has had some challenges in taking society along that journey with it. And they have had some challenges. It's aquaculture.
It's like, as all primary sectors have their challenges, but how well you have connected into your communities is have a big influence on how well you can work through those challenges together. And you have to be respectful as well of understanding other perspectives and being transparent about how you're trying to, how you're trying to deal with them. So things like therapeutics, for example, we're not hiding from the fact that if we need to use it, we will put fish health first and foremost and do so. But we'll do it the right way and make sure we're monitoring very effectively, et cetera.
I think you've got two more that have come through online, and these are related to the wellboat. The first one's from Mark Andrew Bolton and Irina Gundoltseva . Apologies if I said that wrong. The wellboat seems like a no-brainer. What is the total estimated CapEx you are looking at for the B, Blue Endeavour to allow this 10,000 production per annum, and how much of that is already covered, including the wellboat?
Okay. So in respect of Blue Endeavour, we haven't yet finalized the total capital plan because there are so many different moving parts to it. Some of it will depend on what assets we choose to invest in directly and own ourselves versus what assets we want to lease. So, for example, the wellboat, we're choosing to lease it, we don't have to buy it. The factory, we may well do a sale and leaseback of the factory. The infrastructure that we do want to own is the aquaculture hard assets of farms, pens, barges, RAS systems, the very specialized sort of kit that's dedicated to, to the farming operations and of course, the working capital as well.
And then, it'll depend on how fast we want to scale up as to whether or not it can be entirely funded from cash flow or whether or not the board has an appetite for any level of debt or any sort of equity raise. So there's all those myriad of options to play with. At the moment, it's a long way down the track before we're scaling Blue Endeavour, so it's not a number that we've yet disclosed. The number, though, for the piloting program that we're doing with the SFFF, which is the pilot BE, the pilot RAS, and the genomics, is around NZD 27 million.
So that's an indicator of the kind of quantum investment we're doing at the pilot phase, and all of that is funded from internal cash flow and with support from SFFF with MPI.
Okay, and our final question, this one comes from Kevin Arscott of Iconic Investments Limited. Could someone please provide a summary of the timing and volume uplift of the production of salmon? Can you please clarify how the volume will change with the addition of the wellboat and the Blue Endeavour pilot, and how will this increased volume impact the company's financial performance?
Okay. I think for that one, I'll just refer to the guidance that we issued in November 2025, which is on the website on the investor presentation. The harvest outlook for 2027 was 7,200-7,800 tons, midpoint 7,500 tons, and for the following year, FY 2028, it's about 8,500 from memory. So that's the uplift from where we are today at around 5,500, and that is predicated on the wellboat being in place. So that's a sort of two-year outlook. And then, of course, beyond that, we'll continue to scale the inshore farm operations. We can get closer to 10,000 tons there. And with the Blue Endeavour pens, each pen is up to 500 tons. We'll have two pens out there in that pilot phase.
The first lot will be stocked at a much lower density, so up to about 500 tons. The following year, we'll increase the stocking density up to about 1,000 tons, but that's built into our harvest outlook. One of the challenges, as I mentioned before, it takes three years to go from a broodstock to an egg. So, having the increased access to feed discharge in the inshore farms, we can't just turn it on like that. We've actually got to spawn the fish, which is a three-year cycle. Grant's got to get the smolt ready, and then we scale into it. But we are increasing quite quickly.
Next year is almost 2,000 tons uplift, and we haven't yet turned that into an earnings outlook, but we will do so at the appropriate time. But the harvest outlook, it gives you a good indication that, you know, earnings are gonna follow that, fairly, fairly strongly. Particularly given that we've talked about the break-even point in the business is around about 5,200 tons ±, and each incremental ton is the most profitable ton that we have. So if you can add 2,000 tons on top of that, it flows pretty strongly to the bottom line.
There are no more questions online.
No more? Okay. In that case, I'll hand back to Mark.
Just check that there's no more lot in the room. Yeah. No more questions in the room? Okay. Well done. Thank you, Carl, and thank you to the team that assisted with answers there. We have four resolutions that we're putting to shareholders to vote on. I'll just quickly run through those, and then we'll conclude the meeting. S omeone's running this? You are. Oh, I'm running that. There you go. That's a risk. Thank you, Carl. Thank you. So Resolution 1, this is the annual resolution that the board be authorised to fix the auditor's remuneration for the financial year ending 30 September 2026.
The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of that recommendation or that resolution. So that is number one. Number two. Resolution number two is that, having retired in accordance with NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1, Jack Porus be re-elected as a director. The board unanimously again recommends that shareholders vote in favor of Resolution 2. Jack, if you don't mind, I'll ask you to come up and address the meeting.
Thank you, Mark. Flattering photo, taken a few years ago. I've been a lawyer practicing in Auckland with the legal firm Glaister Ennor for over 50 years. And since 1990, I've had the privilege of representing the Tiong family in New Zealand. And it was in that role as their advisor, that I was called upon in the mid-1990s to assist with the amalgamation of Regal Salmon and Southern Ocean Seafoods, to create the company that we know today as New Zealand King Salmon. Now, I'm particularly pleased to see Paul Steer here today, who was the inaugural CEO of that particular new company. About 18 years ago, the Tiong family sold half of that company to the private equity investor known as Direct Capital Partners.
A formal board was established, and I was appointed to that board by the Tiong family to represent their interests, and I have sat on the board in that capacity ever since. A lot has happened to the company since then, and whilst it has not all been positive along the way, I have really enjoyed the journey. It is particularly rewarding to see the company today stronger in every way than it has ever been before. With the establishment of the pilot offshore farm known as Blue Endeavour, the leasing of a wellboat, the establishment of a pilot RAS system, and many other developments, supplemented by a committed and capable management team, this company is now poised for strong growth.
I hope that you will support my re-election as a director of this company, so I can continue to assist in guiding it through this exciting and critical phase of growth. It is my view that this company can provide an exceptional return for not only its shareholders, but for our country as a whole. Thank you.
Thank you, Jack. Thank you very much, Jack. We move to Resolution 3. This is the same, that having retired in accordance with NZX Listing Rule 2.7.1, Catriona Macleod be re-elected as a Director. Again, the board unanimously recommends that the shareholders vote in favor of Resolution 3. As I said at the start of today's meeting, Catriona has unfortunately been taken ill in Tasmania, where she lives, and has not been able to travel. But we have received a video addressing today's meeting on her re-election. So I'm hoping if I push this button once more, we'll see and hear from Catriona.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm so sorry I can't be with you in person today. Talking to our shareholders and hearing their stories and connections to the company is a real highlight for me. But sadly, I've come down with a doozy of a cold and was unable to travel. I'm pleased to seek re-election as a director of New Zealand King Salmon. Having served on the board since 2020, I've overseen and contributed to a number of significant developments within the company. My personal expertise lies in aquaculture production, environmental management, and environmental governance, and ensuring appropriate and meaningful engagement with the wider community. Throughout my tenure, I've been especially proud of our commitment to fish welfare and to environmental and social responsibility, and I look forward to continuing to support the leadership team in these important areas, particularly as we look towards Blue Endeavour.
Aquaculture presents many challenges, but we offer an outstanding product. I believe that the current leadership, our committed staff, and clear strategic focus, we're well positioned to seize new opportunities for the company and our shareholders. I'm optimistic that we will realize our true value in coming years, and I very much look forward to supporting the team to achieve that. Thank you. Over to you, Mark.
Thank you, Catriona. I assume you can hear us in Tasmania, and our wishes are with you for a speedy recovery. I'd also just like to mention, you know, when I took the earlier question about aquaculture expertise at a governance level I talked about the aquaculture person sitting on the fish farming committee. Yeah, I was remiss in not, you know, reinforcing to shareholders that Catriona has an immense knowledge and experience set in aquaculture, and she mentioned it there. Not only does she have an extensive background in aquaculture, she brings so much more to our board. You know, we're very lucky to have her. Final resolution for today is that the wellboat transaction, as described in the explanatory notes, is approved for the purposes of NZX Listing Rule 5.1.1.
And again, as I have said and as Carl's mentioned many times today, you know, we believe that this is a truly transformational initiative and opportunity for our company, and we as a board unanimously recommend that shareholders vote in favor of Resolution four. That brings the meeting to a close. I'll close the online voting shortly. If you haven't already cast your vote online, please do so now. If you have voting papers in the room, please pass those to Computershare as you leave. The votes will be counted under their scrutiny and will be released to the NZX later on this evening. So, finally, thank you all for joining us today.
Thank you all for your continued support, shareholders, for trusting us with your capital and continuing to stay with us as we go through this voyage that we're on to rebuild, strengthen, and capture what we all absolutely believe is a unique and substantial opportunity for the company and for New Zealand. Thank you to our staff for, you know, the work that you do every day. You know, it is truly appreciated, recognized, and we, you know, we couldn't be luckier to have a team led by Carl, as good as the one we have. To the partners we've got in the room, again, thank you for your ongoing involvement in our business and your support. We've got drinks and some nibbles outside, salmon, I hope.
And there are small, you know, packs of salmon for you all to take home and enjoy with your families, you know, as a small gift from the company, your company. And look, I hope you've enjoyed today. I think it's been a really good meeting. You know, Carl, thank you for your transparency and the detail that you have shared with us all. Travel safely, and we look forward to seeing you all next year. All the best.