Fremantle Octopus eyes new investors and potential buyers to turbo-charge growth

WA’s biggest supplier of octopus to the world’s dining tables is already dealing with buyer interest as it targets new funding to turbo-charge growth.

Fremantle Octopus Group has hired agribusiness corporate advisory firm Kidder Williams to sound out interested investors or buyers for the privately-owned company, which is backed by about 90 shareholders, including institutional investors and WA family offices.

Chief executive and veteran company promoter Glenn Wheeler, who has restructured and expanded the business since taking the helm in 2017, said several international and national groups had shown interest in the WA group as part of the Kidder Williams process.

“We’ve got an open mind about how we would structure a transaction,” Mr Wheeler said.

He said the Fremantle Octopus board, which is chaired by former Automotive Holdings Group boss Bronte Howson, was looking for a backer who could support the company’s booming growth in domestic and overseas markets.

New funding would be used to expand its fishing fleet to increase supply of the tetricus species of octopus caught of the WA coast to the group’s O’Connor processing plant, Mr Wheeler said.

“We really are just warming up on the international front.

“The only thing we need to do is put vessels in the water to catch more octopus, because we have a waiting list of international buyers.”

Offshore sales of Fremantle Octopus’ high-end, branded products — raw and steam cooked tentacles, and marinated octopus — have been growing at about 25 per cent annually in recent years, with the group selling to supermarket and restaurant chains in the US, Singapore, Hong Kong and China. Its octopus will be stocked in storied UK department store Harrods from January.

According to Fremantle Octopus’ pitch to investors, it is the only supplier in the world providing commercial volumes of Marine Stewardship Council-certified octopus, feeding growing demand from buyers seeking ethical and sustainably caught seafood products.

It is supported by a dominant market position in WA, where the company has 47 per cent of licences in the octopus fishery and first right over another 7 per cent.

Fremantle Octopus says its licences are worth more than $50m, though this value is not reflected in its balance sheet because of accounting standards.

The group operates across three managed fishing zones covering 2880km of WA coastline, stretching from Shark Bay to the Great Australian Bight.

Founded by former crayfishermen, brothers Ross and Craig Cammilleri, it uses its own patented trigger traps that attract only octopus and avoid the indiscriminate capture of other species.

Fremantle Octopus’ latest accounts show its revenue grew from $8.6m to $9.3m in the 2024 financial year, despite a lower catch blamed on a three-month pause in fishing “in response to challenging global seafood markets which negatively impacted working capital”.

However, demand has since recovered, with sales between July and October up 22 per cent on the same period a year earlier.

Fremantle Octopus said in the annual report Kidder Williams “has been engaged to source a strategic investor to support FOG’s growth objectives”, but would also “explore other growth or potential transactions”, including “a partial or complete sale of the company”.