Buy-Out of Bumble Bee Completed

Castle & Cooke said Friday that four managers of its Bumble Bee Seafoods division have completed a $73-million leveraged buy-out of the San Diego-based tuna-canning operation. A Castle & Cooke spokesman said that “First Boston Co. and certain other investors” aided in the purchase.

Castle & Cooke will retain the San Diego cannery, which it shut down in 1982. As a result, the new company, Bumble Bee Seafoods Inc., will move to new offices in Kearny Mesa in September.

Bumble Bee, which had estimated sales of $200 million in 1984, employs 2,000 people worldwide. Most of them work in a tuna cannery in Ecuador and a cannery in Puerto Rico, which the new owners have leased from Castle & Cooke with an option to buy within five years.

In addition to those canneries, the new owners acquired product inventory, the Bumble Bee brand and other trademarks.

Friday’s sale means that Castle & Cooke is officially out of the tuna-canning business. It had closed a Hawaii facility in 1984.

Bumble Bee Seafoods’ new president, Patrick Rose, said that “being independent of a large parent company gives us the added flexibility needed to be more responsive to the marketplace.” He said that Bumble Bee ranks third nationwide in sales of tuna and that it is the leader in sales of albacore (white meat) tuna.

In addition to tuna, Bumble Bee markets canned salmon, clams and oysters.