Murmansk cod quota holder taken over by Russian bidder

The Russian fishery industry has seen more mergers recently towards concentration of quota shares of valuable species in the hands of more successful companies.

Along these lines, the latest news has come from Murmansk where, according to sources in the trade, LKT Company known for manufacture of frozen at sea cod fillets has been purchased by leading Kaliningrad-based fishing and processing combine OOO Morskaya Zvezda (Maritime Star ltd).

The value of the deal has not been disclosed while it must have been influenced by the fact that LKT has at least two factory trawlers, a cod quota in excess of 2000 tonnes in 2006 in a context of some reported debts as well.

When LKT was put up for sale there were also foreign bidders such as Portuguese and Spanish interests and according to sources in the trade, the price asked was about USD18 million.

However, the Russian Maritime Star has presumably outstripped the foreign rivals on an unknown end price.

The deal appears to be quite a good investment considering the prospects of extending the term of allocation of quota shares from the current five years (2004-2008) up to 25 years in the next period.