After Camanchaca listed in Oslo, a run of Chilean salmon-farmers began thinking aloud of doing the same, and Multiexport might just join the flow.
“We are, thus far, only listed on the Santiago Exchange,” Salmones Multiexport chief exec, Andres Lyon, explained.
Salmones Multiexport is a quarter-owned by Japanese trading house, Mitsui. The remaining stock is held by Chilean foodstuffs giant, Multiexport.
Last year, company earnings reached about USD 500 million, and the company boasts of having been Chile’s most profitable company. In 2017, EBIT per kilogram reached USD 1.75, far better than market leader AquaChile’s USD1.36 per kilo.
The company balance sheet is rock solid, with net, interest-bearing debt sits at about USD 5 million.
“Yes, I know that isn’t healthy,” Lyon, almost apologetically, told a mostly investor audience at the North Atlantic Seafood Conference in Bergen on Thursday.
Real growth
Like other Chilean fish-farmers, Multiexport grows several species. The company is targeting a harvest volume of 76,000 tonnes this year. About 85 percent of that is Atlantic salmon, with the rest comprising Coho.
“Coho we mostly sell frozen to Japan.”
“We have the concessions to produce 100,000 t by 2020, 2021,” he said, the signal for theoretical growth of a formidable 31 percent in two to three years.
On algae
While Chilean salmon-farmers earlier this winter received a lot of attention in the wake of a Red Tide algae bloom, losses have been limited. “The last time I stood here, the room was full and everyone asked about the algae bloom. Then, in 2016, losses were heavy. This year they’ve been normal.”
In all, Lyon estimated a growth of three to four percent in the salmon supply out of Chile over last year.
