High Liner Foods, a leading North American value-added frozen seafood company headquartered in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada, has reported that third quarter 2014 sales were up 13.9% to $246.6 million, compared to the same 13-week period during the previous year. Adjusted net income, however, decreased by $2.0 million, or 19.2%, to $8.4 million.
The sales rise primarily reflected the American Pride Seafood business acquired in October of last year, said CEO Henry Demone.
“However,” he added, “excluding sales from American Pride, we continued to experience sales volume declines in our US foodservice business. This reinforces how important it is for the company to bring innovative products to customers, and we continue to make progress on this. We also made good progress on our supply chain optimization initiatives in the third quarter, and expect these initiatives will bring margin improvement and cost reductions beginning in early 2015.”
Meanwhile, it was announced that Mario Marino, president and chief operating officer of High Liner’s Canadian operations, will retire in April of 2015 after serving with the company for 34 years. He will remain active in an advisory role until the end of 2015, and thus be available to consult with his successor.
It was also announced that Frank van Schaayk has joined High Liner’s board of directors. The food industry veteran brings the company a great depth of experience, including much gained when he held various management roles at McCain Foods over a 22-year period.
