Blue Star Foods Corp. of Miami buys Taste of BC Aquafarms of Nanaimo
Taste of BC Aquafarms team members, with President Steve Atkinson, seated in the centre © 2016 HA Photography
NANAIMO – Blue Star Foods Corp. of Miami, Florida has signed a term sheet on December 28 to acquire Taste of BC Aquafarms Inc., a land-based Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) salmon farming operation on Jameson Road in Nanaimo.
The family-run company, incorporated in 2010, is the oldest, continuously operating RAS full grow-out salmon farm in North America. It has been selling its steelhead trout under the Little Cedar Farms since 2013, and it is Ocean Wise certified.
Blue Star is a sustainable seafood company that processes, packages and sells refrigerated pasteurized Blue Crab meat and other seafood products in Canada, the United States, Mexico, the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, France, the Middle East, Singapore and Hong Kong.
Steve Atkinson is President of Taste of BC Aquafarms © 2016 HA Photography
“We are delighted to be joining Blue Star Foods through this acquisition,” says Steve Atkinson, President of Taste of BC Aquafarms, who is joined in the company by wife Janet and children Amanda, Benjamin and Bill. “From the beginning, I wanted to create an RAS model that we could easily replicate in multiple locations, with predictable outcomes, and leave a legacy of a new industry of land-based salmon production in British Columbia and beyond.
“We took a different approach than others in developing RAS for salmon production,” Atkinson adds. “First, we wanted to develop a proven, successful culture system, and now we are looking to deploy this system in multiples. Our modular design strategy works and is highly scalable.”
Blue Star Chairman and CEO John Keeler states: “We believe land-based salmon farming can be part of the solution of healing our environment and will meet the gap between the growing global demand of salmon and a supply that is limited by its environmental impact, as well as geographical and governmental constraints.
“While there are other public companies pursuing a similar business strategy, we believe this opportunity is massive and has plenty of space for several participants,” he adds. “We are very thrilled to partner with the Atkinson family, the founders and operators of Taste of BC Aquafarms, who have been pioneers in RAS farming since 2010. They’ve built a proven and scalable model and we are excited to strategically fund their next level of growth and use our sales platform to market their delicious, sashimi-grade steelhead salmon.”
© 2016 HA Photography
According to a press release announcing the sale, RAS technologies are non-invasive, land-based aquaculture method “that is expected to reshape the seafood industry over the next several decades. RAS land-based farming avoids some of the current pitfalls of existing methods of sourcing salmon”, including fish harvesting in open environments and ocean-based net pens.
With the global population expected to rise to approximately 9.8 billion people by 2050, an increase in demand for protein food sources, particularly marine protein, is anticipated.
Atkinson notes: “I see no reason why the RAS salmon production in BC cannot potentially exceed 100,000 metric tons annual production in the next two decades. Along with Blue Star, we intend to be leaders in this new industry.”
Blue Star’s acquisition of Taste of BC Aquafarms is being done through a combination of cash, equity and assumption of debt, and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2021.