Mowi to elect Aino Olaisen to Board; New Zealand King Salmon appoints interim CFO
To keep up to date with the latest personnel changes across the seafood industry, SeafoodSource is compiling a regular round-up of hiring announcements and other personnel-related shifts worldwide. If you have an announcement, please send it to [email protected].
– Mowi has announced that it will hold an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) on 20 November to elect Aino Kristin Lindal Olaisen to the company’s Board of Directors.
The move comes after Mowi’s recently-approved acquisition of Nova Sea, the company which Olaisen owned and where she served as Board Chair.
Mowi’s EGM notice said that alongside the election of Olaisen, Leif Teksum would be elected new Deputy Chairman and Kristian Melhuus would resign from the Board.
Mowi received approval from the European Commission to pursue its acquisition of Lovund, Norway-based Nova Sea on 20 October, after the Commission conducted an investigation of the deal under the E.U. Merger Regulation.
In its findings, the Commission said that Mowi’s vertically integrated business was sufficiently different from Nova Sea’s farm and primary processing business to allow for the merger.
“Value creation and community-building along the coast, and especially in Northern Norway, is very important to us. I believe this will create more value and more jobs in Nordland over time,” Aino Olaisen said at the time of the acquisition’s announcement.
– New Zealand King Salmon CFO Ben Rodgers is stepping down effective 28 November and the company has announced that Katie Bennett will serve as interim CEO until a replacement is found.
Bennett is currently the Head of Finance and Sustainability at the Nelson, New Zealand-headquartered aquaculture company. She spent much of her career at accounting firm Ernst & Young, before becoming Financial Controller at PHI International and then Financial Controller at New Zealand King Salmon.
After a year in that role, she was promoted to Head of Finance and Sustainability.
Rodgers announced his departure in August 2025, and in September the company announced H1 losses due to biological issues that hampered performance and forced the company to reevaluate its harvest and profit expectations for 2026.
The company is still in the process of opening an open ocean pilot farm called Blue Endeavor, for which it was granted regulatory approval in 2024, and for which it recently purchased a Blenheim, New Zealand processing site.
– Europrean fishing sector representative body Europêche has named Margo Angibaud its new senior policy advisor, tasking her with amplifying the industry’s voice in EU and international policy discussions.
Angibaud most recently worked for the French National Committee for Fisheries and Aquaculture, where she became an expert in fisheries policy.
In a release about the appointment, Angibaud expressed her passionate support for sustainable bottom trawling fisheries and other industry practices which she said are widely misunderstood.
“From experience, I know how vital bottom fisheries are to feed people, sustain jobs, and keep coastal communities alive. Yet, I fear that the progressive loss of E.U. bottom trawlers will only increase the 70 percent E.U. dependence on seafood imports from non-E.U. countries, such as Asians ones. We must revert the situation now,” Angibaud said. “Our vessels comply with the highest global standards of environmental and social sustainability. There is always room for improvement, and we are working hard to minimize our environmental footprint. Innovations like AI machine learning show great promise, allowing us to sort species and sizes directly underwater rather than on deck.”
In the same release, the organization emphasized that the needs of the European fisheries sector are often forgotten.
“I will dedicate all my efforts to ensuring that the voice of EU fisheries is heard in EU forums on these crucial topics. Food production must be treated as a priority for the EU, on par with security, renewable energy, transport or environmental protection,” Angibaud said.
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