November 8, 2024 — New Brunswick, Canada-based aquaculture firm Cooke Inc. has announced it will purchase Peruvian fishmeal and fish oil producer Corporación Pesquera Inca (Copeinca).
Under a binding share purchase agreement, a wholly owned subsidiary of Cooke will indirectly acquire all the outstanding shares of Copeinca, Peru’s largest fishing company and one of the world’s largest fishmeal and fish oil producers.
November 7, 2024 — The following was released by Cooke Inc.:
Cooke Inc. (“Cooke”) and PF Cayman New Holdco Limited have executed a binding share purchase agreement under which a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cooke will indirectly acquire all the outstanding shares of Corporación Pesquera Inca S.A.C. (“Copeinca”) of Peru — one of the world’s largest fishmeal and fish oil producers and exporters.
Copeinca was established in 1994 and has grown to become Peru’s largest fishing company with 2,770 employees, 45 vessels and 8 processing plants that span the north and center coastline of Peru. Copeinca holds the largest anchoveta (Enaraulis ringens) quota in Peru at 15.9% and processes approximately 21% of the country’s total catch for annual production of approximately 200,000 MT of fishmeal and 23,000 MT of fish oil.
Upon completion of the acquisition, Cooke will strengthen its growing marine ingredients business and diversify its geographic and species portfolio.
“There is tremendous compatibility between Cooke and Copeinca, and we’re excited to welcome Copeinca’s dedicated employees to the Cooke family of companies,” said Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke. “High quality fishmeal and fish oil are essential animal and human nutritional ingredients. They ensure a safe and wholesome feed supply for the growth and care of animals in several farming groups, including aquaculture. We believe Copeinca will be a major contributor in furthering Cooke’s growth as a leader strengthening global food security.”
Copeinca holds numerous industry certifications that reflect its commitment to food security, health and safety, and environmental sustainability including MarinTrust, Friend of the Sea, ISO 14001, ABE, BASC, GMP+, and HACCP.
“Copeinca and Cooke share a people centric culture focused on building up working waterfronts in rural coastal communities through sustainable fish harvesting and responsible processing. Cooke’s strategic agility and vertically integrated operations will enable Copeinca to remain competitive in an evolving global export market,” said Jose Miguel Tirado, CEO of Copeinca. “Our Peruvian company is thrilled to join the Cooke family of companies. Peru and Canada have a very strong and growing trade and investment relationship thanks to active collaboration between governments under the Canada-Peru Free Trade Agreement.
Cooke entered the marine ingredients sector in 2017 with its acquisition of US-based Omega Protein Corporation, a nutritional product company and a leading integrated provider of specialty oils and specialty protein products.
Peru is the second largest export market for Canada in Central and South America, and Canada is the fourth most important export market for Peru in the world.
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close in November.
Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. acted as lead financial advisor to Copeinca, together with Antarctica Advisors International Corp.
About the Cooke family of companies:
Cooke Aquaculture Inc. was established in 1985 by the Cooke family in New Brunswick, Canada. From humble beginnings of one farm site and 5,000 salmon, Cooke Inc. is the largest private family-owned seafood company in the world employing 13,000 people worldwide. The Cooke family of companies operate global aquaculture and wild fishery divisions in 14 countries providing a sustainable seafood source reaching tables all over the world. Cooke’s core purpose is to ‘cultivate the ocean with care, nourish the world, provide for our families, and build stronger communities.
November 13, 2023 — The U.S. Coast Guard is taking more aggressive action to police the Pacific Ocean in an effort to curb illegal fishing conducted by China’s distant-water fleet.
The USCG has opened the Illegal Unreported Unregulated Fisheries Center of Expertise (IUUF COE) in Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A., to serve as the center for U.S. efforts to combat illegal fishing activity in the Indo-Pacific region. It also created a specialized environmental response unit, the Marine Environmental Response Regional Activities Center (MER RAC), to advise partner nations in preventing and countering illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in their home waters. And it recently completed an operation to counter IUU fishing off the coast of Peru.
December 16, 2022 — On Thursday, 15 December, Peru’s government instituted a national state of emergency, responding to outbursts of violence from protesters unhappy over the 7 December ousting of the country’s left-leaning president, Pedro Castillo, and the swearing in of then-vice president Dina Boluarte as Peru’s new head of state.
Castillo was facing allegations of corruption, with an estimated 50 separate cases pending with Peru’s Public Ministry. In an attempt to avoid impeachment over those allegations, Castillo illegally moved to dissolve congress and rule by decree, and was subsequently arrested and jailed. Peru’s Supreme Court of Preparatory Investigation is evaluating a federal prosecutor’s request for 18 months of preventive detention for Castillo and the former prime minister, Aníbal Torres. Castillo will remain jailed until that request is resolved, according to Reuters. Judge César San Martín said that if Castillo is found guilty of the crime of rebellion and conspiracy against the state, he would face a sentence of no less than 10 years.
April 6, 2022 — Coastal regions off West Africa, the mid-Atlantic near Portugal and waters off Peru are the riskiest spots for illegal fishing and labor abuse, with most occurring aboard vessels registered to China and other countries with poor anti-corruption oversight, a new study has found.
The study, published in Nature Communications, found that nearly half of more than 750 ports assessed worldwide are linked to either labor abuse or illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
The high seas have become “a safe haven” for illegal fishing, with millions of tons of such fish caught every year, authors wrote, incorporating an online survey of experts that revealed the pervasive nature of these practices.
Researchers found that vessels that engage is such activity also often have labor abuses on board, including practices such as forced labor, debt bondage and poor conditions.
Read the full story at The Hill
February 18, 2022 — Lima, Peru-based fishmeal and fish oil producer Exalmar has become the first company to achieve the MarinTrust chain of custody standard under its version 2.0 standards for further processing and trading activities.
“We are eager to meet the demands of international markets. Our commitment is from the capture of the raw material from responsible sources, processing and certified storage, for its safe and traceable commercialisation. This means assuring our customers the full traceability of all our fishmeal and fish oil,” Exalmar Commercial Manager Judith Vivar said.
Read the full story at SeafoodSource
January 7, 2022 — In 2008, a team of researchers boarded an expedition vessel and set sail for the anchovy-rich waters off the coast of Peru. They were searching for a place to extract a sediment sample that would unearth secrets about the ocean from 130,000 years ago, a time when the planet was experiencing its last interglacial period. About 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of Lima, the researchers found an ideal spot; they bore into the seabed and drew out a 20-meter (66-foot) core sample.
Over the next 13 years, researcher Renato Salvatteci and a team of colleagues worked to date the core and measure fish debris. They were trying to figure out what fish were living along the Humboldt Current system off the coast of Peru during that interglacial period, when the ocean contained little oxygen and was about 2° Celsius (3.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than the average temperature experienced in the current Holocene epoch — conditions that almost match what scientists project for 2100 as climate change rapidly transforms our modern world.
Today, the Humboldt Current contributes to more than 15% of the global annual fish catch, mainly due to its abundance of Peruvian anchoveta (Engraulis ringens), a species in the anchovy family. It’s also what global conservation authority the IUCN calls “the most heavily exploited single-species fishery in world history.”
Every centimeter of the sediment held an astonishing amount of information — about 90 years’ worth, said Salvatteci, a fisheries engineer at Kiel University in Germany. What they found embedded in the ancient sediment wasn’t anchoveta, but the vertebrae of “considerably smaller” fish, such as mesopelagic and goby-like fish, that were able to cope with the low oxygen levels in the water. They published their findings in Science on Jan. 6.
April 30, 2021 — Global Fishing Watch (GFW) has signed an agreement with Brazil to publish its vessel-tracking data.
Brazil is the sixth Latin American nation to sign a data-sharing agreement with GFW, a partnership between Google and the advocacy groups Oceana and SkyTruth, joining Peru, Panama, Chile, Ecuador, and Costa Rica.
March 23, 2021 — The U.S. should consider leading a multilateral coalition with South American nations to push back against China’s illegal fishing and trade practices, a U.S. intelligence agency has recommended in a document obtained by Axios.
Why it matters: China’s illegal fishing industry is the largest in the world. Beijing has made distant-water fishing a geopolitical priority, viewing private Chinese fishing fleets as a way to extend state power far beyond its coasts.
What’s happening: Huge fleets of hundreds of Chinese vessels have had boats fish illegally in the territorial waters of South American countries, including off the Galapagos Islands.
November 5, 2020 — Four South American countries have joined forces in a bid to combat illegal fishing by huge Chinese fleets off their coasts.
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru have threatened measures “to prevent, discourage and jointly confront” illegal fishing near their exclusive economic zones in the Pacific.
The joint statement made no specific mention of China but environmental groups Greenpeace and Oceana have repeatedly warned of the growing presence of Chinese fishing fleets in the area.
The South American quartet said they would boost “cooperation and real-time exchange of information” to highlight the illegal fishing.
Ecuador in July complained to China over a 300-vessel fleet off Galapagos, saying around half of them had turned off their tracking systems so they could not be located.