Big rush to buy into Salmon Evolution

The Norwegian land based aquaculture company Salmon Evolution looks set to raise 500 million kroner – or more than £42-million – in new capital following a private placement of shares that was several times over subscribed.

It was announced only a few days ago that Salmon Evolution is partnering Dongwon Industries, South Korea’s largest fishing company, in a £130 million project to build one of the world’s most environmentally advanced land farms on the Korean peninsular.

But in a private placement of shares in Oslo on Friday, the company received subscriptions for 100 million shares at five kroner each. Salmon Evolution said:

\’The Private Placement attracted very strong interest from Norwegian, Nordic and international high-quality institutional investors and was more than nine times oversubscribed, excluding shares pre-allocated to cornerstone investors.\’

The net proceeds from this private placement will be used to partly fund the first construction phase of the company\’s land based salmon farming facility at Indre Harøy near Alesund in Central Norway and to further develop the project and for general corporate purposes. The farm will use a through-flow system taking seawater, much of which can be re-used and filtered.

Salmon Evolution chairman Tore Tønseth said a strong stock exchange listing was absolutely crucial for the future growth of the business, adding:

\’We have always said that we will use the capital market actively and it is reassuring that such heavy investors come in with significant amounts\’.

Salmon Evolution, which has also attracted investment worth NOK 50 million from South Korea’s Dongwon Industries, hopes to start trading on the Oslo Stock Exchange\’s Merkur Market later this month.