The Scottish Salmon Company, which runs fish farms from Argyll to the Hebrides, expects a strong upside from higher salmon prices this year after enjoying a limited benefit from the rising price last year.
It has reported underlying full-year earnings before tax and interest of £3.3 million, against £500,000 for 2012, on 3120 tonnes less volume.
The company said: "This improvement is due to the significant increase in global salmon prices, albeit that the company was unable to take full advantage of the superior spot prices as a result of previously contracted sales."
Volumes are expected to rise to 27,000 tonnes. SSC said: "The planned contracted levels at 60% for 2014 provides opportunities to take advantage of the expected strong market by securing contract sales at significantly higher prices than 2013."
During the quarter, an additional licence was obtained in Greanamull in the Western Isles, with consent of 2400 tonnes .
The improving picture came despite a widening fourth quarter loss from £400,000 the previous year to £1m, as volume dropped from 8336 to 5271 tonnes. The year's harvest was 20,825 tonnes against 23,945 in 2012.
SSC said this was partly due to amoebic gill disease affecting juvenile fish in 2012, ongoing mortality issues at two sites in Gigha, and poor December weather.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article