Tasmania’s Tassal, the last ASX-listed salmon producer, is looking to expand into new species – including barramundi and kingfish – as it enters new ownership under Canadian seafood giant Cooke Aquaculture.
Cooke settled its $1.7bn takeover of Tassal on Monday – and the company will be pulled off the exchange – with chief executive Glenn Cooke in Australia to meet staff and outline his new operation’s next phase of growth.
This includes exporting Tassal’s products to new markets, including Europe where Cooke has recently acquired a prawn distributor.
“Tasmania sells and I think there is positioning for some of that. I also hope to bring some of our other products through Tassal into the Australian market – shrimp, crab, those types of products,” Mr Cooke said.
The close of the sale marks a transition of Tasmania’s $1bn salmon industry into complete foreign ownership and comes as supermarket chains are looking for more fresh fish meat, particularly white-flesh species, to offer year-round seafood.
Mr Cooke said he would work with Tassal and its chief executive Mark Ryan – who has led the company since 2003 – to expand Tassal’s product offering.
Cooke has turnover of $2.7bn, with, salmon farms in Canada, US, Chile and Scotland, and 10,000 employees. It is understood to be looking to increase its geographic diversification further to help reduce the risks such as adverse weather and disease.
Mr Ryan said Tassal was exploring expanding into barramundi – four years after it branched out into prawns after it acquired Fortune Group for $31.9m. “(Tassal) doesn’t necessarily have to be salmon and prawns. There’s potential opportunities in barramundi or kingfish,” Mr Ryan said.
“We’re a global operation now. So I think for us, it’s not just saying ‘it has to be here or there’. It really is about which is the best spot to actually do that and give you the best payback and from a risk point, what was going to be the place that minimises the risk.”
Tasmania has also banned further leases of its waterways for salmon farming, pushing producers out into the ocean, about 20km offshore, in rougher, federal waters – or looking to waterways in other states or breeding different species.
Tassal 40-year-old fish breeding program has delivered a food conversion ratio close to 1:1. In other words, it takes about 1kg of feed to produce 1kg of fish, about eight times less than what’s required to produce the same amount of beef.
Mr Ryan said he was confident it could do the same for other species.
“Prawns or shrimp, globally they work at sort of 2.2-3kg. Already, we’ve taken that down to 1.5kg within three years,” the Tassal chief executive said.
“I’ve talked about barramundi, which is so similar to salmon it’s not funny in terms of infrastructure and practices, and there’s no reason we couldn’t employ that into growing barramundi.
“We’ve got a really good base where we use the technology and particularly the AI where it‘s not just about overfeeding, it’s about underfeeding fish as well. If we can optimise that, that just puts us in a really good spot.”
The company has branched out into seaweed and it hopes to grow the asparagopsis variety, which is used to feed livestock to lower their methane emissions.
Cooke’s acquisition of the company attracted criticism from activist organisations, including the Bob Brown Foundation, which expressed concern that the shift to offshore ownership reduced reporting requirements, while claiming multinationals could buy influence and bully regulators.
Mr Cooke dismissed that criticism as “fake news” and a “bald-faced lie” from “well organised groups”. He said science was on Cooke’s side and Tassal had a credible management team.
“We feed a lot of people very healthy protein and we’re going to continue growing our business to more healthy programs. As far as these environmentalists, or so-called environmentalists, you know, we better continue to fight that message with the truth,” Mr Cooke said.
“To basically throw non-truths and fake stories around, bald faced lies, that’s not nice and just discredits them. It just shows what kind of people are out there trying to protest when they have to lie.
“You‘ve got to remember these well organised groups, they have the next platform to get people to scream and yell because they need to raise money to pay for their salaries. So it’s a very circular thing.”
David Williams, the investment banker who advised Cooke on the deal through his Kidder Williams advisory firm, told The Australian: “Farming animals and fish has been subject to continuous improvement, in animal husbandry and feed and growing methods.”
Mr Williams was also a previous owner of Tassal, acquiring it for $42.5m after it had fallen into administration in 2003 before floating it on the ASX a year later.
“Modern fish farming is a relatively new business and there are many learnings every year to improve practices. Continuous improvement is important because aquaculture will continue to be a low-cost way of feeding the world,” Mr Williams said.
“Cookes are one of the best operators in the world and will accelerate industry improvement here with their technologies and experience.”