Antarctica Advisors Acts as Exclusive Investment Banking Advisor to Bristol Bay Native Corporation in its Acquisition of Blue North Fisheries and Clipper Seafoods

/in

October 1, 2019 – Antarctica Advisors LLC, the leading Seafood Industry-focused M&A advisory firm, acted as the exclusive investment banking advisor to Bristol Bay Native Corporation (“BBNC”) in its acquisition of a controlling participation in Blue North Fisheries and Clipper Seafoods, the two leading operators in the freezer longline cod sector in Alaska.

Jason Metrokin, President and CEO of BBNC commented: “The Alaska fisheries are an integral part of our shareholder’s lives and our acquisition of these two leading operators in the Pacific cod sector represented a unique opportunity for our group to enter the strategically important seafood industry.  The Seafood M&A Team at Antarctica Advisors provided BBNC management and board of directors with valuable industry expertise and execution capability which was integral to the successful completion of this complex transaction.”

Read more

Bristol Bay Native Corporation To Acquire Blue North Fisheries and Clipper Seafoods

/in

Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC) is pleased to announce the pending acquisition of Blue North Fisheries and Clipper Seafoods, two leading operators in the sustainably-managed freezer longline cod sector of the Bering Sea fishery. Effective September 30th, this acquisition will put BBNC, an Alaska Native corporation with deep cultural ties to fishing, in a position to bring Bering Sea earnings home to Alaska, benefiting its 10,000 shareholders as well as the local economy.

Read more

Pacific cod merger closes; BBNC deal set for start of October

/in

The US’ two largest Pacific cod longline companies have officially merged, sources confirmed to Undercurrent News.

A deal between Clipper Seafoods and Blue North, which received the go-ahead from the US Department of Justice earlier this week, closed at 12:01 a.m. Friday, Sept. 13, sources said.

However, an investment in the company from the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC), which plans to take a 75% stake in the newly merged Blue North Clipper will take a few more weeks and will likely close at the beginning of October, sources added.

Read more

Seafood Executive Outlook 2019: Investment, optimism and a lot more M&A

/in

Our exclusive survey of over 300 top seafood executives gives guidance to where the industry is headed. Download it now!

Seafood executives are in an optimistic space right now, with many saying they expect higher revenues, more M&A activity and more investment in infrastructure and new product development in the coming year.

That’s according to results of an exclusive email survey IntraFishconducted with over 300 top global seafood industry executives earlier this year. The survey’s findings were revealed during the IntraFish Leadership Breakfast during Seafood Expo North America in Boston in March.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL SURVEY HERE! (pdf)

The survey respondents represented various sectors of the seafood industry, but largely self-identified as being in the aquaculture, processing, wholesaling and distribution sectors.

Read more

Could Blackstone go fishing for deals with new $22bn-plus fund?

/in

The Blackstone Group has just raised more than $22 billion from investors for its latest private equity fund. With this mountain of money could the US-based buyout giant look at seafood mergers and acquisitions (M&A)?

Given the increased private equity appetite for seafood M&A, maybe, according to Undercurrent News sources. Blackstone — the world’s largest asset manager with $472bn on its books — completed the first close of its eighth private equity in March, according to Bloomberg News. However, Blackstone has not yet set a limit on the investment pool, which it ultimately expects to eclipse the $24.56bn fund record set by fellow buyout behemoth Apollo Global Management in 2017, which has $249bn under management, reported Bloomberg.

Blackstone has been eyeing deals in the sector before. Back in 2015, Undercurrent revealed Blackstone made a bid for the Peruvian anchovy assets of China Fishery Group, along with industry players Parlevliet & Van der Plas (P&P) and Samherji.

Read more

Nine big seafood M&A moves to watch for in 2019

/in

By Jason Huffman, Tom Seaman and Jason Smith

The seafood industry has a fever and the only thing that will cool it down in 2019 is more consolidation.

To say there were a lot of mergers and acquisitions in 2018 would be an understatement. Undercurrent News has identified 127 deals, up from 117 in 2017 and 102 in 2016. The fourth quarter of 2018 alone saw 42 deals, the most since we started tracking in January 2015. The joint second-highest quarter for deals was Q3 of last year when we recorded 34, the same as in Q4 of 2017.

These deals include quite a few big ones in multiple sectors, from salmon aquaculture in Chile to fishing firms, processors, wholesalers and exporters in Europe, the US, Canada, and Asia. But the global M&A party is not nearly over based on the conditions, as suggested by Ignacio Kleiman, a managing partner at Antarctica Advisors, in Miami, Florida, in an earlier interview.

Read more

M&A Advisor: More US firms need to be looking to secure resources overseas

/in

Undercurrent News – August 22, 2018

North American companies need to be more aggressively seeking access to raw material resources overseas, believes Birgir Brynjolfsson of Antarctica Advisors.

Speaking to Undercurrent News, Brynjolfsson – who worked as the exclusive advisor to Mitsui & Co on its March 2018 deal for Mark Foods – noted there is a perception that US companies in the seafood sector are interested in looking overseas for expansion.

“But what we’ve seen is that there are so many opportunities within North America that there is no need for the companies to start looking overseas.”

“We get a lot of inbound communications from advisors in Asia and Latin America asking ‘hey, we’ve got this opportunity, are you guys interested?’ And our recommendation is that the North American companies have not been aggressively going abroad acquiring the right resources.”

Read more

Sources: Iberconsa, Pescanova an ‘ideal match’; management would prefer PE

/in

The likely upcoming sale process for Portobello Capital’s stake in Grupo Iberica de Congelados (Ibercosa) will attract a lot of trade and private equity interest, with the Madrid, Spain-based  private equity (PE) investor in a strong position, said one banker.

According to one source, Gorjan Nikolik of Rabobank, investors should look at unifying Ibercosa and Grupo Nueva Pescanova. However, Nikolik acknowledged the issues with a move like this. Other sources said this is not likely to be a move the management of Ibercosa is likely to want to see, at least in the short-term.

Read more

WEBINAR: Financial Trends Shaping the Seafood Landscape

/in

Read more

Global seafood players need to buy US market access, says advisor on Mitsui investment in Mark Foods

/in

The investment from Mitsui & Co in Mark Foods shows large, global groups are realizing acquiring or investing in a US distributors is the fastest way to get access to the market, said the advisor to the giant Japanese conglomerate on the deal.

“Global companies are realizing it takes a lifetime to build a market position in the US. The only way to achieve a strong position in the US market is through partnership or an acquisition of a well-established company,” Birgir Brynjolfsson of Antarctica Advisors, who worked as the exclusive advisor to Mitsui on the deal, told Undercurrent News.

Mitsui, which has also has minority stakes in the salmon farming arm of Chile’s Multiexport Foods and Vietnamese shrimp supplier Minh Phu Seafood, already has a US operation involved in the food sector.

Read more