the nortas tour of tasmania nortas

Major Sponsor Tour of Tasmania Aug 30th - Sept 3rd The Nortas Story
Nortas is a private company owned by Richard Doedens, a local Hobart businessman. Richard established Nortas’ parent company, Russell Falls Aquaculture, in 1978 with the aim of producing plate size freshwater rainbow trout for the local market. The trout farm was developed on a 5 acre site at National Park, which is approximately an hour’s drive north of Hobart.
The original production target for the farm was 30 tones per annum and this was soon achieved. Richard then recognised the limited potential of growing small trout for the local market and in 1982 began exporting trout eggs to Italy, Scotland and Germany.
On one of those early sales trips to Scotland, Richard saw salmon and trout being grown in sea cages. At that stage, freight issues were causing problems for the egg export business and so he decided to focus on growing trout in the sea.
In 1983, the Tasmanian Government invited a Norwegian company Noraqua to come to Tasmania and set up a salmonid industry. The Government put up seed capital to fund the development of a hatchery Saltas and fertilised salmon eggs were brought in from the Gaden Hatchery in NSW, from stock originally imported from Nova Scotia in 1964. Noraqua established, which was later to become Tassal, to grow Atlantic Salmon. The company also approached Richard to establish a joint venture for growing trout in the sea and in 1986 Nortas officially began operations.
The industry’s first salmon were produced in 1985/86 with an output of 53 tones. There were now a number of companies interested in entering this new industry, but a lack of stock from the Saltas Hatchery was the limiting factor. Nortas began supplying aspiring salmon farmers with trout for their marine leases and to lift production levels, a second fresh water site was developed at Karanja near the Russell Falls trout farm. By 1989, there were around 14 companies and operators in the new salmonid industry and most were suffering huge losses and many failed financially as the early learning curve took its toll.
At that stage, Noraqua signalled that it wished to wind up its joint venture with Richard, which was also making a loss. By this time Richard had sold down his shareholding in Nortas to 26%, with the remainder held by Gibson’s (the local feed manufacturer) and Noraqua. Gibson’s also wanted to divest itself of Nortas and so Richard offered to acquire all the shares in the company. Nortas then went through a short period of down sizing and rationalisation, but from 1990 the company began to expand again, confident that the early production issues were now understood. The product focus moved from Ocean Trout to Salmon.
Since 1990 the company has been profitable and from a relatively small base the business has grown at an average compound rate of over 30% per annum.
The company has been listed in the Price Waterhouse ‘Business Review Weekly’ 100 fastest growing private companies for four years in a row and Nortas is now one of the largest producers of salmon and trout in Australia.
Nortas now employs over 150 Tasmanians and has a turnover approaching 30 million, which is expected to double over the next two years. The company has operations throughout Tasmania with a hatchery at Mt Field National Park, marine farms around Bruny Island and in Macquarie Harbour and a factory at Mornington.
The Nortas Tour of Tasmania is the final of the three-event Skilled International Series, which started in Victoria earlier this year with the Skilled Bay Cycling Classic and the Skilled Melbourne-Sorrento Cup.

Full coverage of racing commences on Wednesday the 30th August when updated daily reports/photos/results from Tasmania will be available onsite back