Sealord's partner Nissui drops ownership of whaling company

Nissui, 50 percent owner of Sealord, is to withdraw from its part ownership of a Japanese whaling company and said that it intends to stop processing and selling whale meat in Japan .

 

Anti-whaling environmental groups have threatened Sealord and US-based Gorton's Seafoods with consumer boycotts. Gorton's is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nissui.

Nissui and other shareholders of Kyodo Senpaku, which owns the fleet that carries out scientific whaling in the Antarctic and western North Pacific for Tokyo-based Institute of Cetacean Research, have decided to divest their shares in the company and pass them to Japanese public interest organisations that have an interest in whaling.

Sealord chief executive Doug McKay welcomed the decision.

Kyodo announced late last month that the shares owned by Nissui and the four other private shareholding companies would be progressively transferred to several public interest companies – an arrangement it said would “more accurately reflect its activities”.

Mr McKay said the campaign by the environmental groups was "unfortunate and misdirected".

Sealord had consistently made known the significant opposition to whaling by large numbers of New Zealanders and Australians and the New Zealand and Australian governments, he said.

"I look forward to Greenpeace acknowledging Nissui's decision and doing the right thing by ending its misdirected campaign against Sealord," he said.

Aotearoa Fisheries Limited owns the other 50 percent of Sealord.

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