December 19th, Cape Town - Oceana is pleased at the decision by the Competition Appeal Court to uphold its appeal and in so doing confirm its entitlement to include the pelagic fishing rights in its proposed acquisition of Foodcorp.

Oceana Group's CEO, Francois Kuttel, said that in the absence of securing the pelagic fishing rights, the company could have not gone ahead with the deal. The pelagic fishing rights were a commercial imperative for the acquisition to proceed.

The R400m deal will involve Oceana acquiring Foodcorp's fishing business, which consists of the business of catching, processing and selling deep-sea trawl hake, south coast lobster and pelagic fish. Excluded from the acquisition is Foodcorp's west coast lobster and hake long-line fishing rights.

"Over half of our canned pilchards are currently imported from 12 canneries we have established internationally. We now want to look at replacing some of these imports by using Foodcorp's pelagic fishing rights."

"We argued from the start that we were best placed to secure Foodcorp's long term future and this has been a very long and arduous process. What is critical is the sense of security and certainty this now brings to the approximately 1000 employees of Foodcorp. They have been in a state of limbo since the process first started, which must have been very unsettling for them."

distributed by