Icicle Seafoods owner Paine & Partners announced Sept. 4 that the sale of the company to buyers Dominion Catchers, LLC and Convergence Holdings, Inc. has been cancelled. The sale was anticipated to close in August and was announced in late June.
Company representatives declined to comment further on the reasons for the cancellation. Some online industry sources have speculated that a provision in the American Fisheries Act which requires U.S. citizens to have 75 percent ownership and control of commercial fishing vessels 100 feet or greater in length may have played a role in the sale’s termination.
The late June press release announcing the sale said the Indonesia-based company Convergence would acquire Icicle’s land-based wild seafood processing and farmed salmon operations while Dominion, a U.S.-based firm, would acquire harvesting and processing vessels and associated fishing rights.
The press release announcing the cancellation also said that the sale of Icicle will be reinitiated upon completion of the 2015 salmon season and that the involved entities “do not intend to disclose developments regarding the sale process until a transaction is announced.”
Icicle Seafoods began as Petersburg Fisheries in 1965 and was acquired by Paine & Partners in 2007. The company is now headquartered in Seattle and was described by Paine & Partners as “one of the largest and most diversified seafood companies in North America.”
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