Bakkafrost plans bid for all SSC shares

BAKKAFROST plans to bid for the entire shareholding of the Scottish Salmon Company, its chief executive said today.

Yesterday, the Faroe Islands’ largest salmon farmer announced it had acquired a 68.6 per cent stake in SSC from Northern Link in a deal worth £517 million.

But CEO Regin Jacobsen said in a presentation at the company’s Faroese headquarter this morning that he intended to ‘trigger a mandatory tender offer for the remaining 31.4 per cent free float in SSC’.

He added: ‘(This acquisition) creates a combined differentiated global leader in premium salmon with dual exposure to Faroe Island and Scottish premium salmon.

‘It creates positive synergies and it also diverges Bakkafrost from a purely Faroe Island farming company into a company with a presence in two attractive salmon farming markets.’

The priorities now were to improve SSC’s profitability over the next five years, and create positive synergies, along with transferring best practices from the Faroe Islands, including those around feed and the use of larger smolts.

Jacobsen also said that as SSC was particularly dominant in the UK (33 per cent of sales) and Europe (48 per cent) and as Bakkafrost’s main markets were in North America, China and other parts of Asia, the deal would give the combined company a stronger presence on the global stage.

One of SSC’s successes has been the development of its premium brands and he made it clear that Bakkafrost plans to continue to focus and grow this brand strategy. It also fitted with its mission of delivering healthy and sustainable salmon to the world.

Bakkafrost had been on a long journey in the Faroe Islands to improve its operations and Jacobsen said he planned to bring the same policy to its new acquisition.

‘We believe that experience will be good for SSC and that the investment we have carried out in the Faroe Islands should be replicated in Scotland . We can learn from each other,’ he added.

‘High quality and branding will be a key in our market place strategy. Faroe Island has very high quality salmon and Scottish salmon is also perceived as being of very high quality.

‘We believe we have a very strong high end market waiting for us.’