Definitive agreement of Grieg Seafood Hjaltland UK not yet reached.
In a statement on the Oslo Stock Exchange, Grieg Seafood announced that that the company is in discussions with a third party regarding a potential sale of Grieg Seafood Hjaltland UK, the parent company of Grieg Seafood’s Shetland business.
“The discussions are ongoing. Grieg Seafood will not make any further statements either before a definitive agreement is reached or when the discussions are ended,” wrote Grieg.
The site comes with 17 active seawater licences, one freshwater facility and one harvesting facility.
Undercurrent News said that an anonymous source told them that Scottish Sea Farms (SSF), the joint venture operated by Leroy Seafood Group and SalMar, has had a substantial bid accepted.
E24 claimed (quoting Undercurrent) that the SSF reportedly bid EUR 207 million.
Grieg Seafood has held the troubled and loss-making business in Shetland for sale since 2016, after it has over time failed to deliver satisfactory results.
Buyer interest, however, has been lean. Now, this may be about to change.
Grieg has previously hoped for around a EUR 150 million price tag for the company.
“Book value is NOK 1,481 million (EUR 145 million. ed). We don’t want to speculate on what is realistic, but if we thought the value was lower, we would have made a write-down. We have not done this,” said CFO Harald Atle Sandtorv during the quarterly presentation in February, according to the news site Dagens Næringsliv.
