Cooke Seafood, Hyannis, Maine, signed a definitive agreement to purchase Icicle Seafoods, Inc., Seattle, Wash., to enhance the company’s investments in both the wild fishery and the aquaculture sectors.

“The closing of this deal will be an exciting venture for us as it will add a well-respected fishery to our family businesses,” says Glenn Cooke, president of Cooke Seafood Inc. “We have tremendous respect for the Alaska fishery and its highly valued brand in the seafood marketplace. Our family and our business is rooted in a small coastal fishing town on the East coast of Canada, and we have become a mainstay to communities in rural and coastal Maine. We look forward to meeting with similar communities in Alaska and supporting them for the long term.”

The deal will include Icicle’s three business units, which harvest and process over 150,000 metric tons of seafood, including wild salmon, groundfish and farmed Atlantic salmon,annually. By adding the Atlantic salmon farming operations in Seattle to its current operations in Hyannis helps Cooke strengthen its leadership role in the U.S. aquaculture sector. This acquisition also makes it so Cooke is said to be the only company in the world that farms salmon while holding a significant market position in wild salmon.

Because of Icicle’s diversification across a wide array of species and product forms, Cooke’s global sales team will be able to provide customers with year-round access to fresh seafood such as wild salmon, black cod, pollock, rockfish, crab and farmed salmon in addition to fishery products from the Wanchese Fish Co., Canada.

“The Icicle team is excited about the opportunity to join the Cooke family of companies and to be able to focus on the expansion of our footprint in Alaska,” says Christopher Ruettgers, chief executive officer of Icicle Seafoods. “Cooke provides Icicle with a long-term owner that is dedicated to the seafood industry. The partnership with Cooke also means access to capital to further modernize our platform, expanded market access for the products harvested by our fleets and a broader product offering for our customer base.”