Staff buy Loch Fyne's oyster firm in deal to save jobs
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Your support makes all the difference.The Loch Fyne Oyster Company, which was put up for sale after the death of its co-founder last year, has been taken over by its staff in a deal that will guarantee their 100 jobs.
Based in Argyll, the company harvests a million oysters a year from Loch Fyne at Cairndow and also sells mussels, fresh and smoked fish, venison and organically farmed meat to outlets in Britain, the Continent, the Middle East, the Far East and North America. The deal is thought to have been worth about £5m.
"This is a completely natural evolution," said Andrew Lane, a marine biologist who co-founded the firm more than 25 years ago with Johnny Noble, a local landowner who died last year.
"The staff are the spirit and character of the company. They know the business inside out and without their commitment over the years we would never have made it this far."
Under the deal, the Baxi Partnership, an investment trust in St Andrews established through an Act of Parliament in 1983 to help employee buyouts, agreed to purchase most of the shares belonging to Mr Lane's and Mr Noble's estate and hold half of them in trust for employees.
The remaining 50 per cent of shares will be available for purchase among individual employees and, over the coming years, a proportion of the company's yearly profits will be used to buy company shares from the trust to award to staff as a bonus.
David Erdal, Baxi's executive director, said: "This type of deal is exactly what our fund is all about. We are keeping the business in the local community, safeguarding jobs and we believe it will help the company expand."
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