SeaFood Business

MAY 2014

SeaFood Business is the global trusted authority for seafood buyers and sellers. We are the seafood industry's leading trade magazine with more than 30 years of experience. Our coverage is based on the "business" of buying and selling seafood.

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Top Stor y Visit us online at www.seafoodbusiness.com May 2014 SeaFood Business 21 obligated to report sales to the media; their voluntary participation is appreciated. Corporations based in for- eign countries like Japan, Tailand and South Korea own several companies on the list; we ask them to iso- late their North American business interests. Companies are also ofered the option of providing a sales range or an estimate instead of a specifc number. For companies that choose not to participate, their sales carry over from the previous year, but for only one year. Com- panies that do not participate two consecutive years are re- moved from the list. Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, both of Seattle, declined to divulge fnancial information for 2013. Calls to Nissui went unreturned. Email Senior Editor James Wright at jwright@divcom.com Maruha Nichiro Hold- ings, an $8 billion Japanese conglomerate with U.S. headquarters in Seattle, does not report sales for its U.S. holdings, which include Westward Seafoods and Pe- ter Pan Seafoods of Seattle and Trans Ocean Products of Bellingham, Wash. Another notable absence this year is Yihe Corp. in Pasadena, Calif., which de- buted at No. 10 last year with $500 million in sales. Te company ran into tu- mult in 2013 when it was placed into receivership by one of its creditors, which resulted in turnover at the executive level and a major decrease in sales. When ap- proached at Seafood Expo North America in Boston in March, company founder Steven Chen said Yihe's an- nual sales would not qualify it for the list but he expressed hope of returning soon. Lastly, in late March, Cooke Aquaculture in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, reached an agreement to purchase Meridian Salmon Farms in Scotland from Ma- rine Harvest. Te sale was required by the European Commission for its approval of Marine Harvest's acquisi- tion of Polish salmon pro- ducer Morpol in September. Te Meridian pickup could tack on CAD 150 million or more to Cooke's annual sales. Methodology Te Top 25 companies include vertically integrated suppliers, wholesalers and distributors. Inquiries were made to more than 40 com- panies across the continent. Te ranked companies operate on vastly diferent business models. It's under- stood that, in some cases, the sale of the same fsh may be counted more than once, as certain companies on the list are known to do business with each other. Two examples: Tri Marine International supplies tuna to the major U.S. tuna can- ners — Chicken of the Sea, Bumble Bee and StarKist — and all four companies are on the list. Secondly, Cooke Aquaculture sells its farmed Atlantic salmon to a number of the other companies on the list. SeaFood Business asked qualifying-company execu- tives to share their total sea- food sales and reviewed the annual results of two public companies, Clearwater Sea- foods and High Liner Foods, both based in Canada. Te sales for the three Cana- dian companies (including Cooke) are adjusted to the U.S.-Canadian exchange rate as of Jan. 1, 2014; 365 days prior, the two currencies were at parity. All leading U.S. seafood frms are privately held or family-owned and are not 18_21TopStory.indd 21 4/16/14 9:36 AM

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