ABOUT THE COMPANY
The Leroy Seafood Group is a leading seafood corporation founded in 1899. The company began when fisherman and farmer Mikkel Lerøen sold fish at a local fish market in Bergen, Norway. Over time, Lerøen expanded his operations to encompass retail, the sale of live shellfish, and the development of exports in his business. However, the company was forced to shut down parts of its operations in the late 1980s and early 1990s amid inadequate funding and poor performance (1). In 1997, the Leroy Seafood Group entered a private placement deal to help develop the company’s value chain. In 2002, the company listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange. Following the listing, the Leroy Seafood Group has made several acquisitions and investments, most notably being the company’s acquisition of Havfisk and Norway Seafood Group, two of the largest whitefish processing companies in Europe, in 2016 (1). Throughout its history, the Leroy Seafood Group has experienced significant growth and has overcome various challenges to shape the company into what it is today.
Today, the Leroy Seafood Group delivers its seafood products to people all around the world. With its main office located in Bergen, Norway, the company has fishing vessels and farms all along Norway’s coast, as well as production plants in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Turkey, and the Shetland Islands and sales offices in the US, Japan, and China (2). This diverse network allows for Leroy to reach over eighty different countries.
As the Leroy Seafood Group looks to the future, the company’s values of honesty, openness, responsibility, and creativity guide the company into its vision of being the most profitable global supplier of sustainable high-quality seafood (3). The company has outlined numerous new opportunities for growth including utilizing marine resources through Leroy Ocean Harvest and creating more innovations and technologies in its business. Leroy also has identified the following ways in which it can help strengthen and develop its core operations: increase sales volume and capacity utilization, focus on costs along the entire value chain, utilize raw materials, interact through digitalization, and prioritize sustainability. Its strategic priorities include focusing on safety, developing staff, reducing carbon emissions, developing company culture, and ensuring predicable regulations (3). As Leroy develops and strengthens these parts of its operations, its overarching goal of becoming the world’s most efficient and sustainable value chain for seafood remains at the heart of the company.
