Welcome to our Q3 presentation. My name is Guðmundur Gíslason, and I'm the CEO of the company. With me today is our CFO, Róbert Róbertsson. There was a good growth of our biomass in sea, an excellent condition for production. We managed to increase biomass by around 6,600 tons, so 76% in the quarter, and reached over 50,000 tons in sea by the end of Q3. We saw significant improvement of our smolt transfer during 2023, with 50% lower mortality compared to 2022. There are potential for further improvement, and our plan to do that is going forward. Harvest Generation 22 started in September, and it took only 14 months of feeding due to our big smolts.
The company is proud of reaching this milestone to get the Generation 22 safe through harvest, and this is due to reorganization and actions taken to secure biological safety. We are moving expected harvest volume by 1,500 tons in Q4, and increase the volume for 2024 by the same amount of 21,500 tons. Reason is to optimize production and higher prices in Q1 expected. Contracts are currently 30%, and price attainment during quarter was at 86.8 NOK per kilo. Operational EBIT of NOK 3.5 million, and EBIT per kilo of 18.2.
Good morning. You can see the financial highlights of the group balance. The balance sheet is strong, with equity ratio over 66%. The main change on the balance sheet is related to continued build-up of biological assets. Our biomass build-up has been going well, and biological assets amounted to around NOK 1.2 billion at the end of the quarter. The biomass build-up is also the main reason for increased liability between quarters. Proceeds from borrowings amounted to NOK 155 million in the third quarter, which was mainly biomass financing. Trade and other receivables increased also by NOK 71 million due to increased feeding in the quarter. Net interest-bearing debt increased by NOK 285 million in the quarter.
Investment of around NOK 300 million in biological assets is the main contributor to increased working capital during the quarter, thus increasing net interest-bearing debt. Along with investment in working capital, both CapEx investments and financial items are the main contributors to increased net interest-bearing debt. Total CapEx investment during the quarter amounted to NOK 51 million, bringing the total investment for the first nine months this year to roughly NOK 135 million. The total CapEx budget for 2023 is NOK 200 million, and for 2024, NOK 210 million. Our updated CapEx projection indicates that investment will not reach NOK 200 million this year. This is due to delays in investment projects, which have been moved from 2023 to 2024.
However, the total projected CapEx investment for 2023 and 2024 remains NOK 410 million, and are mainly focused towards improving the operational performance, and to enable us to reach a stable production of 30,000 tons. We project that after 2024, investments will reach normal levels. Ice Fish Farm is fully financed through 2025. The total facility of the syndicate loan amounts to roughly EUR 156 billion. Net loans from the bank syndicate at the end of third quarter amounted to roughly EUR 100 million.
Yes, I'm looking at our management. I have been the CEO of this company since it was established in 2012, over 11 years. It has been an exciting journey with highs and lows, but now that the company is in excellent position to reach the operational goals, fully financed, improved biosecurity, and highly dedicated and talented team, I have decided to step down as CEO. However, I'm not going far, as I will put my focus on sales and marketing strategy with the goal of achieving premium prices on our quality salmon. We are working on hiring a new CEO, but in the meantime, I will continue to lead the company. The current executive management team is experienced and highly skilled in their field, so I have nothing to worry about in this part.
The company is also supported by Mowi. It has over 50 years' history in agriculture industry. We have also good support from our Icelandic owners, who have vast experience in the fish industry and are now on the board of Ice Fish Farm to support strategy going forward. The company has been in operation since 2012 with over 150 dedicated employees. We have gained experience in Icelandic conditions, both on land and sea. All operations are certified sustainable. ESG is important for our strategy. The use of thermal water and power reduce CO2. There are no chemicals in use, and only natural coloring in our feed with full traceability. Being responsible farmer is a cornerstone for our success. A cooperation with major stakeholders such as government, investors, and financing partners. Operational performance on land.
We have been implementing improvements on the biosecurity and water quality in our land stations, and we are already seeing positive effects. Improvements in water treatment has significantly improved quality of our smolt and growth. Smolt transfer in 2023 reached 5.4 million, with average size of 300-gram. Biggest groups up to 1 kilo. Transfer from smolt station improved as expected, with about 50% higher survival rate after 60 days in sea, and we see possibility for improvements going forward. With updates and investment in smolt station, we aim to produce around seven-eight million, 400-gram average size smolt in spring and autumn. This will increase utilization of sites in sea and reduce time in sea, and therefore lower operational risk.
On Land North, you can see on the right side and pictures from building a new house we are building there, and that house is being constructed for our fresh water station up north to increase capacity and maintain high biological standards. We are also planning to build two new 550 cubic tanks at our post-smolt station at Kopasker to increase size of smolt and the number of smolt from Land North. We have good news from Land South, that we are planning building a new station next to our post-smolt station. The location will be just by the post-smolt station, where we have 27,000 cubics of capacity for post-smolts.
After this, when this has been done, we expect to produce about 3-4 million smolts at high quality, around 600 gram in May and 400 grams in August. This will increase utilization of the sites and lower risk in sea. By building a new facility there, then we are combining everything under one roof. A hatchery for eggs, start feeding, on-growing, vaccination, and then finally, office for employees and the employee facilities. We will design this, and this is under design, and we will have a top-of-the-line technology and a production plan to optimize growth and welfare of the fish. And see, best quarter ever. Records in biomass production. We had around 10.2 million fish and over 15,000 tons in sea at the end of Q3 2023.
We increased the biomass of 6,500 tons. The biggest groups, we started harvesting on around 5.5-6 kg after only 15 months in sea and 14 months of feeding. Average sea temperature was around 7.5 degrees Celsius. That's close to average in our farming areas. Minimal losses due to good sea conditions. We have, though, some incidents. For example, jellyfish have had as part of this season, and we managed to control that incident. Stop feeding, checked what was the status, and adjusted the feeding and maneuvers and tasks around the cages, and managed to stop the incident, and fish recovered within about one and a half weeks.
So this part of where I'm really proud of our team, that we are identifying challenges and finding solution with a high-skilled team to manage the situations that come up. And we, to look at the equipment we had, by merging the companies back in 2022, we see even further utilization of our equipment. So we don't see much investment needed for 2024 and 2025 at the moment. But outlook for harvest, as I mentioned, we are moving 1,500 tons from Q4- Q1 2024, and that's, yeah, based on good biological conditions. Fish is growing well, and also we see potentially higher prices in Q1 than currently. So we have been delaying a little bit harvest due to that.
What is the cause of, or why are we having this good situation? That's because we are the only farmer in the total farming area of the East Coast. We implemented a coast zone management in 2022 to reduce risk and increase biological results. Each zone has its own equipment, land base, and by land base, we mean that the boat and the people, they have separate areas to go from, the boat and backwards. So there's no interaction between sites. And even in Reyðarfjörður, we built up a new land-based station. So we have one in Reyðarfjörður and then one in Eskifjörður to separate the production zones. The generations are split in spring and autumn, and all separate production zones. Fish in, fish out.
We've been farming this in East Coast since 2012. Earlier than that, there were other pioneers, and so in total, there's been farming over 30 years in the East Coast. This period, we have never had to handle any issues with sea lice. Though we are monitoring with the latest equipment, AI cameras, they can take over 20,000 pictures per day per cage, and they can evaluate what the status of the fish is. Do they have sea lice? Do they have wounds, or are they growing as expected? These cameras are really helpful on the following up if there are some things happening in the cages, and we can also control harvesting periods and et cetera with those cameras.
Harvesting station in Djúpivogur was being updated during the harvest break, and it's done excellently. We have a high capacity and running at least 100 tons per day, and we see improved security on blood water treatments and general cleanliness of the site and for the fish and also the environment. Sales, we have fixed sales contracts, and we secured around 30%. We have not increased that much over the last weeks, but our goals has been around 50%. But due to that, we are quite expecting good prices in Q1 next year, that we haven't gone higher on contracts.
Certifications are in place on whole foods and AgroGuard for sustainable salmon, and we are working on ASC and hope to have that in place in Q3 in 2024. So overall, outlook has not changed much from Q2 report. We adjust harvest to increase price and utilize best growing season. Output of smolt is the same. Strategy is work. The main new one is that the board is looking into possibility of dual listing the company on First North Iceland. This listing could improve the accessibility of Icelandic investors for the company. So we're looking optimistic on that.
And then also there has been some news, quite a lot of shaking in Iceland, regarding volcanic activity on the southwest coast, so it's quite far away from our farming areas, and we just hope that things go well going forward. If you have any questions, please write down comments or... Yeah, ask a question. There is the volcanic question: How do you view the volcanic risk for our Land South assets? We have gathered our team together and evaluated what could happen if there's a volcanic eruption and also earthquakes. First of all, we have diesel backups and have over 15,000 liters of oil capacity. We have high amount of water capacity from the wells.
We have, yeah, around 13 wells and can run up to 600 liters per second in each tank, and so that's a huge capacity. And so if we would have some activity on volcano that would maybe happen at sea and therefore produce us that could spread over and but we are quite far away, so we consider this risk low. But we have prepared our team with clothes and masks and other things that we see that could help fighting this if this happen. But again, I look at this as a low risk, but it's better to be prepared and make things possible if they come up.
Then there's a question regarding Land South, the CapEx plans we have there, and if it's included in our CapEx budget. The answer is yes. We are including the Land South project in our CapEx budget, and the CapEx budget guidance for 2023 and 2024 remains NOK 410 million.
Any more questions? In general, if there are no questions, we are extremely proud of the situation at the moment, and starting harvesting end of September, even though it was not high on amount. It showed that we saw the fish and saw the power in the harvesting station, fish running through and making over 400,000 meals per day, and that's our goal, making a good food. And the customers have enjoyed the salmon after deliveries. You see high quality and they're happy with our salmon, and that's... Yeah, customer is always right, and we need to follow up on that and keep moving, making good quality salmon going forward. So I don't see any more questions.
Then, thank for the audience and, and, looking forward to see you back again in hopefully in Q1, in February.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye.