UK – Iceland Seafood International, one of the largest exporters of fish products from Iceland, has unveiled plans of merging two of its UK subsidiaries; Iceland Seafood Barraclough Ltd and Havelok Ltd into one legal entity.

Iceland Seafood said that the merged entity will operate under one leadership team on a single manufacturing site.

The company revealed that it has secured the purchase of the previous 5 Star Fish Site on Great Grimsby Business Park as is planning to transfer both the existing Havelok and Iceland Seafood Barraclough operations to the site.

The seafood processor expects the process to be complete by early 2021, by which time the company said it expects to have created substantial new business and new jobs. 

Iceland Seafood will invest between £5-6 million (US$6.52-US$7.83m) in the site. The site includes a cold store capacity of about 2 000 metric tons of products and 3 processing areas in total of about 10,000 square meters.

The facility will produce a range of products including coated products, both chilled and frozen, natural products, both chilled and frozen and various shellfish productions for the UK retail and foodservice market.

In order to be the sole shareholder of the merged entity, Iceland Seafood has entered into a share purchase agreement with the management of Havelok which jointly hold 33% of the shares in the business.

The consideration for the shares is £3 million (US$3.91m) to be paid half with cash payment and half with shares in Iceland Seafood. Post the transaction, Iceland Seafood will have full ownership in both Havelok and Iceland Seafood Barraclough. 

As a part of the agreement, Danny Burton the MD of Havelok will continue as director in the new merged entity but will be led by Iceland Seafood’s 2 existing UK Managing Directors; Peter Hawkins and Danny Burton,

Peter will head the overall operation while Danny will oversee the refurbishment of the site and operational teams. The business will be named Iceland Seafood UK Ltd.

Bjarni Ármannsson Iceland Seafood’s CEO said “following our NASDAQ main market listing in Iceland in October 2019 where we raised €15.2m of new equity, we announced our intent to make strategic investments in our key markets.

“The announcement represents one of these. We have strong businesses and management teams in the UK and we are confident that we can become stronger as a result of the merger of the 2 businesses on a new, large, well invested site.

“We look forward to grow in both our existing retail and food service markets and within this increasing the opportunities for Icelandic products in the UK market.”