Icelandic fishing company HB Grandi continues to go through a period of change that began when a third of its ownership changed hands earlier this year. The company has announced the acquisition of another operator – and that its new freezer trawler currently under construction in Spain may be for sale.
HB Grandi has announced an agreement to acquire the entire shareholding in fishing company Ögurvík, which had been bought out some years ago by Brim.
Fishing company Brim is owned by Guðmundur Kristjánsson, who also acquired a substantial slab of HB Grandi shares earlier this year and is now the company’s managing director.
The shareholding in Ögurvík is provisionally valued at €95 million, and the acquisition has to be approved by the monopolies board as this will effectively become a merger of Ögurvík and HB Grandi.
The announcement was also made that HB Grandi’s board is examining the options of selling the freezer trawler it currently has under construction at Astilleros Armon’s Gijon yard in Spain, and the announcement may be a way of dipping a toe in the water to gauge interest in the new ship.
The new Rolls-Royce-designed vessel was ordered last year and is has been widely slated to become the most sophisticated factory vessel of its kind in the world when it is delivered in late 2019. The new 81 metre LOA, 17 metre beam trawler will have a capacity for 1000 tonnes of frozen products in its fishroom, and has been seen a candidate to replace much of the company’s older factory vessel tonnage, Örfirisey and Höfrungur III, while Therney has already been sold to Sea Harvest in South Africa.
Ögurvík operates one factory trawler, Vigri, which could become integrated into the HB Grandi fleet, bringing its capacity back up to three vessels and making the newbuild surplus to requirements.
