Land-based salmon farmer begins private placement of shares
Gigante Salmon seeks to raise up to £14.7m to fill funding gap
Norwegian land-based fish farmer Gigante Salmon is seeking to raise between NOK 170 million and NOK 200m (£12.5m-£14.7m) through a private placement of new shares, it said in a stock market announcement today.
The company’s largest shareholder, Gigante Havbruk AS, which directly and indirectly owns 63.64%, has, subject to certain conditions, pre-committed to subscribe for and be allocated offer shares for NOK 130m.
Kulta Invest AS (NOK 15m), Yannick AS (NOK 10m), Jan Heggelund (NOK 10m) and Ristora AS (NOK 5m) have also pre-committed to buy shares.
Net proceeds from the placement will fund Gigante Salmon’s projected investment and working capital needs for the construction and operation of its land-based salmon farming site on Lille Indre Rosøya in Rødøy municipality, as well as for general corporate purposes.
16,000 tonnes
The company announced in April that it would use a bank loan and a private placement of shares to raise the extra NOK 350 million (£25.8m) required to complete the 16,000-tonnes-per-year facility.
Gigante Salmon, which fired its former chief executive Helge Albertsen in March because of huge cost overruns, has arranged a NOK 120m loan from SpareBank 1 Nord-Norge, 50% of which is guaranteed by state organisation Export Finance Norway.
The fish farmer intends to grow salmon in raceways in three production basins excavated into the rock on the island of Lille Indre Rosøya. Basin 3 is completed and is being used to grow smolts to 1kg before they are transferred to basins 2 and 1 to reach harvest size.
Two batches of 640,000 smolts were stocked in Basin 3 at the end of January, but only 160,000 survived. On April 24, Gigante reported that the surviving fish were doing well and had an average weight of 150 grams.
