MARINE Harvest has sold fish farms employing 194 people on Orkney and Shetland to rival Cooke Aquaculture for £122.5 million to meet European Commission conditions for its takeover of fellow Norwegian company Morpol.
The farms were originally owned by Morpol, which had Polish roots, but the sale was demanded to avoid Marine Harvest controlling some 40% of the Scottish salmon industry.
Norwegian-headquartered Marine Harvest retains extensive fish farm interests in the west of Scotland employing nearly 370 people. It also has a head office for Scotland based in Edinburgh.
Marine Harvest, the world's biggest fish farmer, expects to book a gain of 300 million crowns (£30.1m) on the deal and said the sale would increase its potential dividend pay-out.
The operations in Orkney and Shetland are expected to harvest 17.4 thousand tonnes of fish this year.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.
It is conditional on the European Commission agreeing that the purchaser, the transaction and the sales terms meet remedies set out in September when Marine Harvest took control of Morpol.
Cooke chief executive Glenn Cooke said: "We are always looking for strategic development and investment opportunities in the seafood sector.
"This purchase gives us a unique platform for our European operations and is a good fit with our Spanish sea bass and sea bream farming company, Culmarex. We will be able to leverage our global relationships with suppliers and build on Meridian's excellent market reach into both the European and US marketplace.
"We believe this investment in the well respected Scottish industry creates value for our entire group and strengthens our European foothold."
Marine Harvest retains interests in the Northern Isles after spending £65m on acquiring a quarter of the shares in fellow Norwegian-based firm Grieg Seafood in November.
Marine Harvest said last month that 2013 was its best year so far, with all time high revenues and operating profit.
This included record profit for its Scottish operations where Marine Harvest has 25 sea farms around Lewis, Harris, the Uists, Skye, Wester Ross and Lochaber.
It also has four freshwater sites, five hatcheries, and a harvest station at Mallaig.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article