Kingfish Company reports harvest up for Q1
THE Kingfish Company, producer of high value yellowtail kingfish, has reported a first quarter harvest of 228 tonnes, 19 per cent up on the final three months of 2020. The company is still in the red financially but says this is expected given the pace of investment required to build up capacity in the US and Netherlands.
Sales of whole fish equivalent (WFE) in the period totalled
140 tonnes, an increase of 92% year-over-year and in line with Q4 2020, despite hotel, catering and restaurant (horeca) closures throughout the quarter
CEO Ohad Maiman, said he was pleased with the Q1 performance which he put down to a strong effort by a dedicated team at the business.
He told shareholders: “We produced 228 tonnes of high-value Yellowtail Kingfish in the first quarter of 2021, setting another productivity record of 0.70kg (biomass growth per cubic meter per day).
“On the sales and marketing front, we delivered several strategic retail launches in Europe and in the US, with more exciting developments in the pipeline.”
He also said the US site development and phase-2 expansion in the Netherlands were advancing on track, while phase 1b has been completed on time, bringing total installed capacity in the Netherlands to 1,250 tonnes. This phase is scheduled to complete stocks in the second half of this year.
The revenues for last year came out at €4.97m, more or less in line with 2019.
Kingfish said EBITDA was negative at €3.54m and net loss after tax was €3.6m, reflecting the substantial scale-up of capacity that the company is currently undertaking in its expansion of the Netherlands site and development of its first US site in Maine.
A leading Australian aquaculture company has taken the unusual step of asking to be listed on the Oslo Stock Market .
Clean Seas Seafood Limited, based in Spencer Gulf, Port Lincoln, South Australia and a producer of kingfish, mulloway and tuna, has made a formal application for a secondary listing on the Euronext Growth Exchange, trading home to many of Norway’s emerging fish farming businesses.
Clean Seas plans to launch a private offering of new shares to raise capital to more than treble current production of Kingfish to around 10,000 tonnes.
The company, which has engaged Sparebank 1 Markets and Bell Potter Securities as facilitators, yesterday requested a temporary trading halt to its ordinary shares quoted on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) pending the Oslo announcement. In 2005, Clean Seas became the first aquaculture business to be listed on the ASX.
Clean Seas Seafood, formerly known as Clean Sea Tuna Ltd, describes itself as a fully integrated Australian Aquaculture business and the global leader in full cycle breeding, farming, processing and marketing of its hiramasa or yellowtail kingfish.
The company said:“Clean Seas is recognised for innovation in its sustainable yellowtail kingfish farming and has become the largest producer of aquaculture yellowtail kingfish outside Japan.”
Clean Seas is also carrying out research and development work aimed at the future production of southern bluefin tuna.
The company’s other finfish sales include the whitefish known in Australia as mulloway, and wild-caught tuna. Its farming facilities are based at Spencer Gulf and the South Australia fishing town of Arno Bay.