Clearwater receives unsolicited takeover bid

Published: 15 August, 2011

CANADA'S fast growing Clearwater Seafoods has confirmed that its income fund has received a non solicited takeover bid from Cooke Aquaculture of New Brunswick. However, it looks set to founder. Cooke Aquaculture already has a 20 per cent stake in Clearwater Seafoods Income Fund, but Clearwater is planning to convert from a trust to public company later this year.

The reaction so far from Cleawater's founders John Risley and Colin MacDonald has been to effectively tell Cooke Aquaculture "no deal". MacDonald later said he would not be selling at any price.

A statement from the Fund at the weekend said: "CFFI (Clearwater Fine Foods Inc) have further advised the Trustees that they would not support Cooke's proposal as they do not believe that it recognises the enterprise value considering the potential of the Clearwater business and the underlying asset value and therefore the proposal is not fair to unit holders or other Fund stakeholders."

The bid comes as Clearwater announced a 44 per cent increase in pre-tax profits (EBITDA) to Canadian $12-million and sales up £8-million to $78.8 million for the second quarter of 2011.

Cooke Aquaculture is just over 25 years old. It has grown into a major force in fish farming when Glenn Cooke and his family set up a small salmon business in New Brunswick. It has since expanded across Canada's East Coast and into Maine in the US and Chile in South America.

Equally, Clearwater is another Canadian seafood success story. John Risley and Colin MacDonald set up the business in 1976, selling shellfish from a truck. It is a major player in the shellfish business.It recently announced the certification of two of its processing facilities under the British Retail Consortium (BRC) standard for food safety, indicating that it is intending to increase its interest in the UK retail market. It is also eyeing mainland Europe

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