Deal boosts capacity by 9000 tonnes
Cooke's acquistion of Icicle Seafoods, includes five seawater sites in the Puget Sound, adding 9000 tonnes of harvest capacity to the Group.
The deal also includes Icicle's new recirculation hatchery, which has a 2.5 million smolt capacity.
Icicle has been farming salmon in the Puget Sound for over 30 years, and the acquisition will give Cooke its first farms on the west coast of the continent – adding to its existing salmon farming operation in eastern Canada, Maine and Scotland, as well as its sea bass and sea bream subsidiary, Culmarex, in Spain.
The move will not only strengthen Cooke’s leading position in the US salmon aquaculture sector but will mean that it will also become the only company in the world that farms salmon while holding a significant market position in wild salmon.
The deal will include Icicle’s three business units, which harvest and process over 150,000 metric tonnes of seafood annually: wild salmon, groundfish (demersal marine species) and farmed Atlantic salmon.
With a worldwide network of cold storage and distribution facilities, Cooke will be able to offer a large portfolio of seafood protein – both farmed and wild – to a broad base of customers in the global marketplace.
Thanks to Icicle’s diversification across a wide array of species and product forms Cooke’s sales team will be able to provide customers with year-round access to fresh seafood: wild salmon, black cod, pollock, rockfish, crab and farmed salmon, in addition to fishery products from the Wanchese Fish Company.
“The Icicle team is excited about the opportunity to join the Cooke family of companies and to be able to focus on the expansion of our footprint in Alaska,” says Christopher Ruettgers, CEO of Icicle.
“Cooke provides Icicle with a long term owner that is dedicated to the seafood industry. The partnership with Cooke also means access to capital to further modernize our platform, expanded market access for the products harvested by our fleets and a broader product offering for our customer base.”
With the acquisition of Icicle, the Cooke group will produce over 275,000 metric tonnes of seafood annually and generate $1.8 billion in annual sales.
