Through the crowdfunding method, Villa Seafood Group has raised €24.9 million (NOK 250 million) to increase ownership in Arctic Filet, and the expansion of production capacity at Filetfabrikken. In addition, and after this input, the Group will be able to act upon new opportunities through Organic Sea Harvest.
"We have previously raised capital through crowdsourcing when we issued a loan for intermediate financing. This time we used the services of Dealflow to raise 25 MNOK and to expand our ownership base to over 100 shareholders. We were very pleased to see the process close just hours after the prospectus went public," Egil Ove Sundheim, Director of Marketing of VSG, told WeAreAquaculture.
According to Sundheim, the new stock was purchased by a mix of existing owners and board members, current employees, and several private investors outside the Villa family. "At the closing of the books last Friday we had over a hundred new investors, most of which were private," he added.
As the Director of Marketing noted, crowdfunding was an "effective way" for them to quickly raise the money needed and at the same time achieve the goal of increasing the shareholder base.
"We are looking at the possibility of a listing on Euronext Growth and to do so we would need a larger number of shareholders than we had before the crowdfunding effort," Sundheim explained.
Going forward, Villa Seafood Group will continue to work closely with partners around us in the value chain to accelerate growth opportunities and to build new market concepts in the seafood category – such as land-based trout from Hima.
Also, the company is currently establishing a new salmon filleting processing factory outside Oslo that will be ready to offer products in Q2 2023.
Villa Seafood Group is the holding company for several international seafood companies. Based in Norway, it operates Villa Seafood, a sales company for primarily value-added salmon products.
VSG also owns a minority share in the value-added salmon processing company, arctic Filet, where Villa Seafood handles sourcing, production planning as well as sales of fresh and frozen salmon fillets.
In Scotland, it is one of the owners of organic salmon producer Organic Sea Harvest and in the US Villa Seafood Inc is a sales company primarily focusing on the North American markets with its range of salmon and groundfish products.
