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Brodrene Sperre and Nils Sperre: Producing bacalao and mackerel in Alesund

By Eva Tallaksen | Published March 11, 2014

Tucked between mountains and the sea near Alesund on the Norwegian west coast, Brodrene Sperre and Nils Sperre are some of the country's largest bacalao and pelagic processorsTucked between mountains and the sea near Alesund on the Norwegian west coast, the island of Ellingsoy is home to a large amount of Norway's production of salted dried whitefish known as bacalao in Spanish, or klippfisk in Norwegian.

Two of these producers are Brodrene Sperre and Nils Sperre. Located next to each other, the two companies specialize in turning whitefish into klippfisk (or just as salted or dried), producing a combined 20,000 metric tons (roughly) -- or more than a fifth of the country total's exports (85,000t from cod and saithe in 2013).

The two also process more than 50,000 metric tons of pelagic raw material each, led by mackerel, Atlantic herring and North Sea herring.

Below is a snapshot into their plants during a visit in February 2014.