Icelandic fishing and processing company Brim’s ISK30 billion (Approx €200 million) offer for the entire shareholding in fish oil specialist producer Lýsi has been accepted, subject to board and monopolies authority approval.
‘The parties see significant synergies and opportunities to strengthen Lýsi’s access to raw materials, and for Brim to position itself further in the seafood value chain,’ a Brim representative commented.
Brim is financing the acquisition with a mixture of cash and shares, which consequently bring in Lýsi’s owners as major shareholders in Brim, as well as enabling Brim to expand into a new business area for the company – as well as handing the company holdings in businesses outside the fishing industry, such as in daily newspaper Morgunblaðið.
Lýsi is a longstanding producer of cod liver oil and a variety of other products including health supplements. It has been in business since 1938, established by brothers Tryggvi and Thórður Ólafsson.
More recently the company has been primarily in the ownership of Tryggvi Ólafsson’s granddaughter Katrín Pétursdóttir, following the merger between Lýsi and the fish drying plant in Thorlákshöfn. A high-tech factory was opened in Reykjavík in 2005, and this was expanded in 2012. The Akraborg liver canning company was acquired in 2015 and a new drying plant was unveiled in 2019, powered by geothermal hot water.
