Sophie Kuijper Dickson, LJI Reporter

The Pontiac may become home to Canada’s largest land-based Atlantic salmon farm in the next five years, if its proponent is granted the permits it needs to run the facilities.
Outaouais-based business Samonix is hoping to build the fish farm at the Pontiac Industrial Park in Litchfield, the former site of the Smurfit Stone mill.
Samonix’s president is Mathieu Farley, also co-owner and president of Chelsea home building company Exo Construction.
Rémi Bertrand, former director general for MRC Pontiac, joined the company as senior director of business development in the fall of 2023.
Bertrand explained the farm will produce 12,000 tonnes of Atlantic salmon a year, with an average fish size of 5 kg.
“We’re doing everything 100 per cent inside buildings, which there is nobody in Canada who does it now,” Bertrand said.
The farm will raise the fish entirely indoors, in large pools of treated water that is drawn from the Ottawa River.
“The salmon is the holy grail of raising fish. It’s the fish that’s the most vulnerable to its environment, so a dramatic change in temperature will affect its life cycle, and a variation in any of its environment could alter its life cycle,” Bertrand said, explaining that an indoor facility that uses treated water allows for total control of the environment.
“There’s no pathogens, nothing that can come in or out of our building without us knowing. This basically allows us to raise salmon that will be vaccine free, with no treatment or medications that will ever be given to the salmon.”
Bertrand explained that a small water plant will sterilize and neutralize the water from the Ottawa River before it is used to fill the pools.
The facility will then use a method called the recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) which treats and recirculates 99 per cent of the water used to hold the fish.
In an article published in the Journal of Cleaner Production in May 2021 [link for web: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652621008246], lead author and research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada Nesar Ahmed suggests RAS farming as an option for increasing the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of Canada’s fisheries.

“RAS are eco-friendly, water efficient, highly productive intensive farming system, which are not associated with adverse environmental impacts, such as habitat destruction, water pollution and eutrophication, biotic depletion, ecological effects on biodiversity due to captive fish and exotic species escape, disease outbreaks, and parasite transmission,” Ahmed wrote.
Bertrand said of the remaining one per cent of wastewater that cannot be recirculated, the solids, largely fish feces, will be removed and treated through a process called biomethanization.
The leftover liquid will be processed by a wastewater treatment plant, and then discharged into the Ottawa River as per the parameters set by the Ministry of Environment.
“It’s just like a municipal wastewater treatment plant would do,” Bertrand noted.
He said he saw many projects cross his desk during his time as director general for the MRC, but that many of them were missing critical components needed to succeed in the region.
“I spent a good portion of my career working for the Pontiac, trying to get something going, and this checks a lot of my boxes.”
‘Room to grow’
Samonix bought 85 acres of the Pontiac Industrial Park in 2022, and another 100 acres this year. Bertrand said the main facility will occupy about 14 acres, and the remaining land will be used for auxiliary buildings, parking, and to guarantee the business has room to grow.
“The [land] will allow us the capacity to double the production down the road,” Bertrand said. “But we’ve also been getting a lot of interest from auxiliary businesses that would potentially want to relocate closer to our production.”
He said a Quebec company that transforms salmon imported from Norway and Chile into fish cuts for poke bowls, smoked salmon, and portioned salmon for the restaurants or grocery stores has expressed interest in relocating to the Pontiac to be closer to the proposed fish farm.
Bertrand also noted that as the business grows, it will consume enough fish feed that it could open its own fish feed plant on site, which the 185 acres will allow for.
He said the location of the site within a day’s travel of markets in major urban centres like Toronto, Montreal, New York and Boston means the farm is strategically placed for growth.
“Just to give you a perspective, the market we’ll be selling into is a market of about 280,000 tonnes of salmon a year, and we’ll be producing about 12,000 tonnes,” Bertrand said. “So there’s room to grow.”
A first in Canada
According to Bertrand, there is no other indoor land-based salmon farm in Canada of the size Samonix plans to be.
In fact, a study conducted by economic analytics firm Counterpoint Consulting for the government of British Columbia found there’s no Atlantic salmon RAS farm in steady-state operation in the world that produces more than 3,000 tonnes per year.
As Bertrand sees it, this presents his team with a critical advantage in a moment of opportunity.
In June the federal government set 2029 as the deadline by which open net-pen salmon farming operations in B.C. must shift to land-based methods.
While there is concern this five-year window will be insufficient for transitioning an entire industry, Bertrand figures the sudden need for expertise in the field could position Samonix, which began initial business plans in 2018, as a leader in the land-based farming method.
“By the time we’re built and operational, and we’ve basically developed the expertise, we will own the knowledge and the expertise to export it to B.C.,” Bertrand said.
“We’re early enough in the game to position ourselves [as leaders] in Northeast America, but we’re late enough in the game to be able to rely on proven technology that’s been tried elsewhere, where they made mistakes and corrected it.”
Bertrand said while Samonix’s proposed scale is unprecedented, the technology is not without evidence of success.
He pointed to a fish plant in Japan called Proximar Seafood that uses technology from the same provider as Samonix. It is smaller – producing about 5,000 tonnes of salmon a year – but is on track to complete its first fish harvest in August.
A few hoops yet to jump
Bertrand said there are two major approvals the company needs before it can put shovels in the ground.
The first is the granting of a 12 MW electrical hookup from Hydro-Québec, the application for which was submitted in March.
At last month’s MRC Pontiac Council of Mayors meeting, Samonix received a letter from council supporting this application.
“The second [approval] is to get our certificate of authorization from the [Quebec] Ministry of Environment. From our perspective, it’s not a matter of if we’ll get it, it’s when we’ll get it,” Bertrand said.
“We’re asking specialists to give a permit in a sector of activity they haven’t necessarily had the opportunity to build some knowledge around yet, because it’s such an innovation for Quebec. So it takes time.”
Bertrand said the company has already conducted several environmental impact studies, and will continue to do so this summer.
“We’re conducting a study on mussels, and have already done studies on fauna and flora. The Ministry of Environment even asked us to do a test on the most vulnerable species of the Ottawa River which is a plankton – a microscopic living form that can be utilized as feed for various species.”
He said Samonix is putting in the technological equipment required to treat its wastewater to meet the criteria of the ministry, so he expects environmental certification to be a “non-issue.”
“If everything goes as planned, by the end of 2025 we should have all of that in place, the final engineering completed, and hopefully be breaking ground in 2026.”