The company Nueva Pescanova has decided to abandon its captive octopus farming project in Canarias. The company has communicated its withdrawal from the concession at the Esfinge dock in Las Palmas via a letter to the Port Authority.
Among the reasons cited by the group for this decision are the "significant extension of administrative deadlines" and uncertainty regarding the "completion of environmental and sectoral procedures." The reproduction of octopuses in captivity has been a long-standing challenge for aquaculture, and Nueva Pescanova, in collaboration with the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) in Vigo, had announced in 2019 that it had overcome this hurdle with its first octopuses raised entirely in tanks.
The project in Las Palmas involved a 31,000-square-meter fish farm with an investment exceeding 50 million euros, aiming to scale up the scientific achievement to an industrial level to meet growing global demand. The initiative, which planned to start commercial sales in 2023, was put on hold and is now confirmed to be cancelled at this location.
The news comes after plans for the initiative were reportedly considered dead in Canarias, according to previous reports. The project had also faced protests from environmental groups, whose pressure had even reached the European Parliament.
Initially, Nueva Pescanova planned to achieve an annual production of 2,400 tons. Breeders would come from its facilities in Galicia, and later the Canarian plant would become self-sufficient. The plan included distributing the product cleaned and frozen, with future considerations for developing value-added products.
