AgriMarine plans to go private
News came today that the Chairman of the Board of Directors of AgriMarine Holdings, Mr Horst Hueniken, has resigned after being appointed to that post in 2013. Last month, the company announced the appointment of Samuel William Ingram, QC to its board. Mr Ingram also serves as President and Director of Durango Oils Ltd, a private oil and gas investment company in Alberta.
AgriMarine announced earlier this month that it had signed an Amalgamation Agreement for Going Private Transaction with a subsidiary company of Dundee, which owns 95% of the fish farming company.
The deal is subject to approval by authorities and the AgriMarine shareholders and a meeting will be held in May to take care of this business.
Dundee has provided funding for AgriMarine’s activities over the past number of years, and last year the parties agreed to convert three notes where Dundee acquired most of the common shares of AgriMarine for CAD$20.9 million (~€15.9 million), including some $14.7 million (~ €11.2 million) for “certain patents and trademarks”.
According to Dundee’s latest financial report: “The patented technology has been demonstrated to materially improve the financial performance of fish farms by reducing growth cycles, feed costs, and biological losses tied to high water temperatures, escapes and disease”.
In December, 2013 AgriMarine purchased a trout farm in a lake north of Vancouver, and started to replace the net pens with its rigid-wall, floating tanks. By the end of last year, four of these tanks were in place, and the first harvest of tank-produced fish took place in January this year. The company states that it will continue to install more closed-containment tanks in 2015 in order to grow its fish rearing capacity.
The Dundee report supports this sentiment: “The fish farming business experienced significant resource growth in 2014. With fish stocks ready for market, volume shipments are expected to increase in the first half of 2015 and continue strong for the rest of the year. As a result, sales and profitability should show progress in 2015. The fish farming business plans to expand its production capacity to take advantage of the strong consumer demand in the organic trout segment.”
Dundee reports that the Carrying Value of AgriMarine was $31.2 million (~€23.7 million) as of December 31, 2014 while the Market Value was $3.1 million (~€2.4 million). The operational results for the last six months of 2014 show a loss before taxes of $5.4 million. Sales of livestock were $2.9 million (~€2.2 million) and cost of sales was $4.6 million, and AgriMarine had General and Administrative Costs of $2.6 million (~€2.0 million) during these six months. Dundee has been charging interest on its financing of AgriMarine to the tune of 12.68% p.a.
