Arctic Fish completes £51m share sale
Icelandic salmon farmer Arctic Fish has successfully completed a NOK 600 million (£51.3m) share sale, it announced today.
The sale increases the holding of Norway Royal Salmon (NRS) to a majority stake of approximately 51.3%.
The share sale comprised a primary offering of 5.7 million new shares which raised approximately NOK 350m, a secondary offering of 3.27m existing shares valued at NOK 200m, and a further 816,993 additional shares.
Oversubscribed
NRS said the sale attracted very strong interest from Norwegian, Icelandic, Nordic and international high-quality institutional investors and was multiple times oversubscribed excluding shares pre-allocated to cornerstone investors.
Net proceeds from the primary offering will mainly be used to fund growth and develop Arctic Fish’s value chain within existing licence portfolio. This includes investment in the expansion of smolt capacity, farming equipment, biomass build-up and processing initiatives to increase the value chain capacity in the expectation of receiving additional licence capacity and for general corporate purposes.
The net proceeds from the secondary offering will be for the benefit of the selling shareholder, Bremesco Holding Ltd, a Cyprus-based company reported by Salmon Business to be owned by Polish entrepreneur Jerzy Malek, who founded the Morpol fish processing business later bought by Mowi.
Sustainable operations
Arctic Fish chief executive Stein Ove Tveiten said: “The company intends to continue to invest and build up profitable and sustainable operations, where the farming is in harmony with the environment and society.
“We are very pleased with a successful private placement and this will secure the funding of the growth and further development of our value chain.”
Arctic Fish shares are expected to begin trading on the Euronext Growth Oslo market on or about February 19.
The company harvested around 7,400 gutted weight tonnes of Atlantic salmon in 2020 and expects to harvest 12,000 gwt in each of the next three years. It plans to double that volume to more than 24,000 gwt by 2025.
