The salmon farmers are ready to dive into the prawn market.
The assets include land, assets and inventory of Fortune Group’s three prawnfarms located at Yamba, New South Wales; Proserpine, Queensland; and Mission Beach, Queensland according to theadvocate.
Tassal Managing Director and CEO, Mark Ryan, said Tassal would invest up $34 million in a development program across the prawn farms. This now provides Tassal with access to a large market comprising 70% of Australian retail seafood sales. Prawn market size in Australia is circa 60 thousand tonnes annually while Australia’s salmon market is expected to reach 65 thousand tonnes by 2020.
“The acquisition of the land, assets and inventory of Fortune Group is strategically compelling to Tassal. It allows us to expand our vertical integration from salmon to include prawns, and unlock further synergies in the seafood supply chain through a highly earnings accretive acquisition,” Mr. Ryan said.
“We currently process and sell prawns through Tassal’s De Costi Seafoods and we are conscious of the fact our customers are demanding more prawns than we can currently supply.
“We estimate for FY19 we will have around 700 tonnes of prawns for sale from the inventory acquired once fully grown out. Our focus is to grow over 3,000 harvest tonnes per annum in the next three to five years.”
