Christian Molinari

Christian Molinari

Contributing Editor

A native of San Francisco, Christian Molinari has lived and worked in Chile for over 20 years, after having arrived in Santiago as a volunteer and falling in love with the culture and its people. He covered business news in Latin America for over a decade, worked in communications at IBM Chile, and currently freelances in strategic communications and reporting.


Author Archive

Published on
April 12, 2022

Chile’s constitutional court (TC) has ruled that the presumption of environmental damage from farmed fish escapes is unconstitutional, setting a precedent for the country’s aquaculture sector.

In August 2020, Chile’s Superintendency of the Environment (SMA) levied a CLP 5.3 billion (USD 6.7 million, EUR 5.7 million) fine against Mowi for an incident involving a large-scale escape of over 690,000 fish from

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Published on
April 4, 2022

Lima, Peru-based aquafeed company Vitapro will invest more than USD 80 million (EUR 72.4 million) this year in its Ecuadorian branch of shrimp feed producer Nicovita, with plans to build a new plant and expand production capacity by 45 percent …

Photo courtesy of

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Published on
April 4, 2022

Chile’s largest salmon farmer, AquaChile, has completed the divestiture of its tilapia operations in Costa Rica, selling its subsidiary Grupo ACI to Costa Rica’s AquaFoods Group for USD 6 million (EUR 5.4 million), AquaChile CEO Sady Delgado reported to Chile’s markets regulator CMF.

“The effect on income from this transaction was a total loss of USD 36.4 million [EUR 33 million],” Delgado said, adding that Costa

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Published on
April 1, 2022

Los Ángeles, Bio Bio, Chile-based Salmones Austral saw revenues jump 39.8 percent to USD 251 million (EUR 227 million) in 2021 on the back of higher volumes sold and a higher average sales price of salmon … 

Photo courtesy of Salmones

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Published on
March 29, 2022

Santiago, Chile-based fishing and salmon-farming firm Blumar saw net profits of USD 19.9 million (EUR 18.1 million) in the fourth quarter of 2021, versus a net loss of USD 7.3 million (EUR 6.6 million) during the same quarter of 2020.

Photo courtesy of

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Published on
March 28, 2022

Increasing sales of plant-based proteins and rising investor attention to cell-cultured seafood – a market which according to market research company Euromonitor is expected to be worth USD 23.2 billion (EUR 21.2 billion) by 2024 – is drawing more Latin American players into the market.

In the alternative seafood market, two countries seem to be taking the lead: Brazil and Chile. The former is undertaking research to accelerate

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Published on
March 23, 2022

Norway-based marine and energy insurance firm Hydor has decided to put an end to its contract covering a fleet of ships that were found participating in illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) tuna fishing, the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) reported.

The fleet of three ships – currently named Israr 1, 2, and 3 – has operated in the Atlantic for years and was blacklisted in December 2021 by the International

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Published on
March 21, 2022

India has come to dominate the U.S. shrimp market, but other countries are carving out niches by focusing on narrow product specifications or in-demand types of shrimp, a Shrimp Insights report has revealed.

In 2021, India remained the largest shrimp supplier to the U.S. by far, with a massive advantage in peeled and other value-added products, the Netherlands-based consultancy found. Peeled shrimp is the most-favored

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Published on
March 18, 2022

Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.-based agricultural giant Cargill, a major aquafeed producer, has announced it will purchase 24.5 percent of the shares of Chilean salmon farmer Multi X.

Founded in 1987, Puerto Montt, Chile-based Multi X has more than 2,600 employees and handles around 100,000 metric tons of salmon a year, with expectations to increase this to 125,000 metric tons by 2023. It has productive activities in southern Chile’s

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Published on
March 17, 2022

Chile-based salmon farming companies are introducing new measures to better mitigate and deal with potential algae blooms that take place with greater frequency and intensity during the summer season, which in the southern hemisphere runs from December through February …

Photo courtesy of the Salmon

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