May 19, 2010

Grupo Luksic to purchase Camanchaca salmon business

Executives of Grupo Luksic are negotiating the forthcoming acquisition of Pesquera Camanchaca SA' salmon farming division.

"We are permanently identifying business opportunities, as much in Chile as overseas, to invest those resources in the best way possible," acknowledged Guillermo Luksic, president of the company.

The Luksic Group is a corporate partnership that operates in different sectors of Chile's economy. Founded at the beginning of the 1950s decade, its initial activities were related to the mining industry, but later it developed diverse interests in other industries. Over the last few years, the group diversified into the sectors of telecommunications, banking, food and drink, hotels and railways.

After receiving the payment for the sale of Telefonica del Sur to US$112.8 million and the transfer of an additional 17% of controlling interest of Banco de Chile, LQIF, to Citigroup (nearly US$1 billion), the Luksic group boasts around US$1.4 billion, before taxes.

"We hope to once again stock salar salmon smolts in 2011, once the vaccines are approved and advances made in the fishery sector in general are headed in the right direction," the general manager of Camanchaca, Francisco Cifuentes, told Estrategia last year.

"We are not interested in participating in the first wave of renewal of this product…but in the second, and it is going to go well for us, without a doubt, as it is a healthy sector of our operation," noted the executive.