Buckie firm is first to be snapped up using fund

LOSSIE Seafoods, a Buckie-based salmon smoker that specialises in exporting to Italy and Switzerland, has become the first company to be snapped up using a £15 million war chest funded by two key players in the Scottish fish industry.

The smoked-salmon maker was bought by Glasgow-based Associated Foods whose chairman, Bill Hazeldean, is also chief executive of the Edinburgh-based but Oslo-listed Scottish Salmon Company (SSC), which produces about 20 per cent of Scotland's salmon.

Funding for the deal came from Scottish Seafood Investments (SSI), a joint venture into which SSC and Northern Link, SSC's major shareholder, have promised to pump 15m.

SSI has bought a 50 per cent stake in Associated Seafoods for 600,000, but specific financial terms of the Lossie Seafoods deal were not disclosed.

Victor West, former business development director at Food Partners, has been made Lossie Seafoods' managing director.