This article is featured in the Q4 2025 Future Strategist newsletter, you can read the rest of the newsletter here.
Salmon farmSalmon farming is an often overlooked corner of the consumer staples sector. The industry dynamics are attractive, with supply growth constrained by biological challenges and regulatory barriers, and demand predicted to grow twice as fast over the next few years. With this in mind, we explore how Mowi, one of the world’s largest salmon farmers, is embracing technology to outgrow the broader industry.
Mowi 4.0: how technology is revolutionising salmon farming
Picture a future where salmon farming relies less on guesswork and manual labour and more on accuracy, data-driven decisions and advanced technology. At Mowi, one of the leading salmon producers, this vision is coming to life through its ambitious ‘Mowi 4.0’ digital transformation. By integrating AI, robotics and cloud analytics, Mowi is raising the bar for efficiency, environmental responsibility and fish health – with Google playing a significant role in this innovation.
From buckets to bytes: the old versus the new
Not long ago, salmon farming was a hands-on, almost old-fashioned job. Workers would throw feed into pens by hand, relying on experience to decide when the fish had eaten enough. Monitoring fish health meant leaning over nets or rowing out in boats, hoping to spot problems before they became serious. Overfeeding polluted the seabed, underfeeding slowed growth and everything depended on human judgment. It was labour intensive, imprecise and risky.
Today, that has all changed. Many of Mowi’s farms are now powered by smart technology. Underwater cameras and AI-driven sensors monitor the salmon, day and night. Feeding is automated and precise, pellets drop only when fish are hungry, reducing waste and boosting growth. Remote Operations Centres (ROCs) oversee dozens of farms from screens hundreds of miles away. What used to be guesswork is now data-driven science.
Google’s tidal AI: eyes underwater
A standout in Mowi’s tech arsenal is its partnership with the Tidal AI platform. Tidal, originally part of Google’s famous Moonshot Factory, brings AI-powered underwater cameras and sensors to many of Mowi’s Norwegian sites. These systems provide real-time insights into fish growth, weight, feeding activity, lice counts and environmental conditions. The Tidal platform, now in over 230 pens, combines machine learning with underwater imaging to monitor everything from biomass to fish welfare, gathering rich behavioural and environmental data that helps Mowi make smarter decisions every day.
Source of images: www.tidalx.ai/en/product, as of January 2026.
Smarter feeding, healthier fish
Automated feeding systems, powered by image recognition and intelligent sensors, have replaced manual feeding. These systems continuously monitor the fish and optimise feeding schedules, ensuring each salmon gets the right amount of food at the right time. This not only maximizes growth but also reduces overfeeding, minimising waste and environmental impact.
AI also helps count sea lice and track fish welfare. If there is a problem, staff can act quickly to keep the fish healthy. Many farms are now managed remotely from central control rooms so fewer people need to be on site.
Robots and remote vehicles: the new farmhands
Robotics play a crucial role in Mowi’s operations. Remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), like the ‘Foover’ systems, handle net inspections and remove dead fish, improving fish welfare and reducing the need for human intervention. This approach boosts efficiency and ensures consistent fish welfare standards across geographically dispersed sites.
Data-driven decisions, from egg to plate
Mowi’s cloud platform connects data from breeding, feeding, farming, processing and logistics. Machine learning analyses everything from lighting and water temperature to feed variants, refining growth, health and yield outcomes. By raising young salmon in land-based tanks before moving them to sea pens, in certain areas Mowi projects that it can increase survival rates by about 50% and reduce lice treatments by 40%.
Automation extends beyond farming into processing plants, where repetitive tasks are handled by machines to boost efficiency and product consistency. Mowi’s digital traceability platform, developed with partners like Digimarc, lets consumers scan QR codes to trace each salmon’s journey from hatchery to plate, building trust and transparency.
Big benefits: for business, fish and the planet
The results are impressive. Mowi expects technology to deliver €300–€400 million in cost savings and helps support harvest growth from 500,000 tonnes in 2024 to over 650,000 tonnes by 2029. Key gains include:
- Improved feed conversion and biomass tracking
- Higher survival rates and better health management
- Reduced manual labour and increased uptime via ROVs and sensors
- Enhanced traceability and consumer confidence
Most importantly, Mowi’s holistic integration of AI, robotics, sensing and data analytics is lowering environmental impact, reducing chemical use and strengthening its ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) credentials. This attracts premium pricing and investor confidence, helping Mowi maintain strong margins even as industry costs rise.
Why it matters
Mowi’s tech-driven approach means more salmon can be produced with less waste and better care for the fish. It is good for the environment, good for business and gives consumers more confidence in the food they buy.
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Kevin Kruczynski
Kevin Kruczynski is a fund manager in the Global Equities team. Kevin joined Liontrust in 2024 from GAM where he managed both global and US equity portfolios. He joined GAM in 2016 from THS Partners, a global equity investment firm and a long-standing sub-advisor of GAM’s oldest global equity strategies.
