Morubel's shrimp plant in Ostend, Belgium, has been acquired by Saint John-based Cooke Inc. (Image: Morubel)

A leading seafood processor in Western Europe has been acquired by Cooke Aquaculture Inc.

The Saint John-based company purchased Morubel’s 14,000 square metre plant in Ostrand, Belgium, which has a production capacity of 18,000 metric tonnes for frozen seafood, retail and bulk packaging, and an opportunity for increased growth.

“Morubel’s focus on developing sustainable, new added value products and continuously focusing on innovation was an attractive complement to our European seafood offerings,” said Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke Inc., in a press release.

“We’re very excited to welcome Morubel’s 100 employees to Cooke. The plant staff, sales and management are exceptional, and they have formed longstanding customer relationships by being a flexible and reliable supplier with consistently high quality and short delivery times.”

Founded in 1954, Morubel distributes its market-leading organic and frozen products to retail, food service and food industry customers across Europe in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and France. Its wild catch products include Argentina red shrimp, tropical prawns and shrimp, Vannamei prawns, crayfish and squid.

The company supplies farmed aquaculture including Black Tiger prawns, northern prawns, mussels and scallops.

“Team Cooke had a strong presence this spring in Barcelona at Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global, the world’s largest seafood trade fair. The Morubel team welcomes the sale to Cooke – we’ve found an ideal alignment to enable our future growth,” said Dirk De Pandelaere, CEO of Morubel, in the release.

“We see a lot of opportunities to expand our product line to sell additional Cooke products in European countries where Cooke is building its presence.”

Terms of the transaction have not been released since both companies are independent.