A company proposing to build a land-based fish farm in Jonesport announced Monday that it has received its final state permits and has purchased the 93 acres it needs to begin pre-construction design on a facility to grow and process yellowtail kingfish.

Kingfish Maine plans to build structures that would total about 573,500 sq. ft. on mostly vacant land on Dun Garvan Road in Jonesport. In a statement issued Monday, the company said the facility will be its first in the U.S., following operations in the Netherlands. The company has secured a retail partnership with Whole Foods to sell the fish, which is commonly used in sushi.

The company describes it as “a highly versatile premium fish species” used in “Italian and Asian fusion cuisines.”

“Today, Kingfish Maine is one step closer to achieving fully operational status, and we are ready to build on our proven blueprint, and scale our technology locally to service our network of distributors nationwide,” said Ohad Maiman, founder and CEO of The Kingfish Company.

In addition to what’s needed for the fish operation, the company is proposing to build residential units for staff, a store and an information center. The development, which will face Mason Bay Road, is about nine miles south of U.S. Route 1 in the Washington County town of Jonesport.

Kingfish Maine’s parent company, The Kingfish Co., operates a similar, though far smaller, facility in the Netherlands that opened in 2017 and produces 1.2 million pounds of fish per year. Plans for the Maine location call for the production of 16 million pounds of fish per year.

The Kingfish project is one of four large-scale fish farms to be proposed in Maine in recent years. The first to get full approval – located in Bucksport on a former paper mill site – has yet to break ground. Whole Oceans plans to build a land-based salmon farm there. A spokeswoman for the company said last week that she expects more news about the project to be released in the first quarter of 2022.

In Belfast, Nordic Aquafarms also plans to build a land-based salmon farm, although local opposition has led to lawsuits that seek to prevent it from being built.

In the Gouldsboro/Bar Harbor area, American Aquafarms is proposing to put two closed-net pen systems in Frenchman Bay to raise salmon, with a processing plant in Gouldsboro. State permits are pending and Gouldsboro residents voted Nov. 15 to put a 180-day moratorium in place for aquaculture development.