The third-generation family-owned Lynas Foodservice has acquired one of Belfast’s longest-established fresh fish businesses, Keenan Seafood.
The deal, which was confirmed by the Coleraine firm’s group managing director Andrew Lynas, will add around 40 staff to its roster and take the total Lynas payroll to more than 700 people.
And it further strengthens the Lynas position in the foodservice market, where it now has more than 5,000 customers and offers well over 5,000 products across frozen, chilled, ambient and non-foods from both its headquarters operation at Loughanhill industrial estate in Coleraine and a chain of 11 stores across the north.
Delivering to pubs, restaurants, schools and hospitals, Lynas had sales last year of more than £200 million and moved 12 million boxes of goods.
Like the Lynas longevity, the Keenan family name has been associated with the fish business in the north for three generations.
T Keenan and Sons Fish Merchants Ltd was established in 1942 and traded under the name Keenan Seafood Ltd, where until the acquisition was led by Gerry Keenan (69), whose father and grandfather created the original business.
He and fellow director Imelda Patrick Keenan (63) have both stood down as people of significant control in the Keenan business, according to documents filed at Companies House.
Operating from a purpose-built facility at Kennedy Way just off the M1, Keenan specialises in supplying a full range of fresh and frozen seafood to many of the leading hotels, restaurants and contract catering outlets across the north, delivered its own fleet of refrigerated vehicles.
Keenan, which sells around 250 lines of fresh and frozen fish, has its own team of expert fish filleters who prepare the fish each day to meet customer specifications.
It buys 15 tons of fish every week to meet demand from its 500 plus customers across the catering and retail sectors, and its customer base complements that of Lynas, which in recent years has built the business via strategic acquisitions as well as organically.
The Keenan acquisition (completed for an undisclosed sum) is something of a return to its roots for Lynas, whose founder Bobby Lynas first started a fishmonger’s business in Coleraine in the 1940s before opening a second fish shop in Ballymoney.
