Samherji, Iceland’s largest aquaculture and sea fishing company has announced it is taking a major step to help people with addiction issues.
Samherji’s Dalvik processing plant
The company said investment in this area is severely lacking so it is establishing a new initiative fund called “Samheldni”, an Icelandic word that translates as “cohesion”.
The fund is intended to support a large-scale effort in infrastructure investments among those providing treatment for addiction in Iceland.
Samherji will contribute 20 million ISK (£150,000) per year over the next five years. The aim is to get the entire business community involved in the project so that the fund can allocate over 300 million ISK to three urgently needed initiatives.
Baldvin Þorsteinsson, CEO of Samherji, said: “We wanted to come in in a handsome manner, but unfortunately the need is so great that more people need to step up.”
“In our operations, we have experienced over the years how profound, sad and destructive addiction problems are and have tried to respond by supporting our employees and their families when they have found themselves in such dire straits.”
He added: “In close proximity to the employees, we feel how shocking these issues are and how hard they test everyone involved. We now want to do this in a more formal and comprehensive way than we have done so far and to organize a joint effort to bravely tackle the problem.
“We have high hopes that we will receive broad public support and strong companies and people in Icelandic business and public life to participate with pledges of donations over the next five years.”
Samheldni has already selected what it says are three large and important projects that will receive support from the fund, with the aim of completely transforming facilities and services for people with addiction problems.
Samherji owns a large trawler fleets and has extensive salmon farming operations in the north of the country. It is also building the Salmon Garden, a large land based salmon project in the south of the country.