September 11, 2016

Cooke Aquaculture Scotland, the regional unit of Cooke Aquaculture, announced it has agreed to acquire Balta Island Seafare – a salmon farming company located in the Shetland Islands for an undisclosed amount.

The acquisition includes three farms with a combined annual output of 1,000 tons of salmon and follows a year after Cooke’s acquisition of Thompson Bros. Salmon Ltd. Together, the two deals give Cooke Aquaculture total control of farmed salmon production in the North Isles according to Shetland News.

“Balta operates in a separate management area to Unst and Yell, which will help Cooke reduce biological risks as well as provide the company with flexibility and synergies in production,” said Cooke in a company statement announcing the acquisition.

Founded in 1987 near the islands of Yell and Unst in the northern region of the Shetland Islands, Balta Island Seafare has worked with the Skaw Smolts hatchery since 1998 in the production of organic salmon according to Seafood Source – something the company says is possible due to the isolation and tidal nature of its farms coupled with its method of low stocking densities enabling it to eliminate the use of chemical pest controls for sea lice and antibiotics.

The addition of Balta aligns with Cooke’s drive for vertical integration and geographic, market, and product diversification as well as its plan for strategic growth through the acquisition of sustainable and responsibly managed operations.

“It’s a beautiful part of the world, a very interesting part of the world, a fantastic environment, and now we control all the sites up there around those islands,” Andrew Lively of Cooke Aquaculture told SeafoodSource during Seafood Expo Asia on September 7.  “It just made sense from a logistics point of view.”

“There’s a lot of synergies, and now there’s the economies of scale,” said Lively. “Now that we have a larger operation up there, it’s better for employment, for everyone.”

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Lynda Kiernan