Sealord, Sanford in fishing talks

Two of New Zealand’s biggest seafood companies are in talks about consolidating their fishing efforts, a senior manager says.

Sealord confirmed yesterday that talks with NZX-listed Sanford were advanced. Sanford’s shares closed flat at $4.06, despite the news.

Sanford’s inshore fisheries manager Shane Walsh told the New Zealand Marine Sciences Society’s annual conference in Nelson that he had been in a meeting at Sealord earlier in the day. ‘‘We were talking about why do we have all these vessels catching hoki?

‘‘Why don’t we work together and create a one fleet-type approach? It’s about increasing efficiencies but working with other people to achieve that.’’

He returned to the theme later in his speech, again mentioning the meeting with Sealord. ‘‘Why do we need three boats to go and catch a certain species of fish when we can just have two boats there and have some sort of cooperative arrangement?

‘‘What about processing facilities? Why do we need to have two factories, one on one side of the road, the other one on the other side?’’ Instead, competitors might work together to improve supply chain efficiencies and create value, he said.

Auckland’s Sanford owns about 25 per cent of New Zealand’s fish quota, with Sealord, Talley’s and iwi the other big players.

Sealord fishing general manager Doug Paulin said both companies had excess fishing capacity, and consolidating their fleets would be ‘‘a huge opportunity to save costs in a pretty tough industry at the moment’’. Sealord and Sanford had been in talks for about six months, he said.

He expected there would be another six months of discussions before changes leading into the 2015-16 fishing year. Any implications for staff numbers would depend on the vessels, who crewed them and what they were fishing for, he said.

While fishing was ‘‘as good as it’s ever been’’, the industry was faced with an unfavourable exchange rate and commodity pricing of fish that was ‘‘not really going up’’, with margins being squeezed, Paulin said.

Walsh said New Zealand should be proud that it was ‘‘the All Blacks of fisheries management’’, but it was well outside the top 10 of international production by volume, and had no international industry influence.

‘‘We’re never going to catch up in terms of volume, but what we can do is catch up in terms of value. We need to differentiate ourselves.’’ This could be done through increasing efficiency by working with competitors, and by moving from sustainability to promoting the provenance of the product, he said.