Operations abroad

After the successful share administration in the 1980s, brothers Erik and Staffan Salén purchase the conglomerate Largus from Salénia in 1993. Largus was originally founded as an offshoot of the Salén sphere’s oil prospecting, but now contains various different trading activities amongst which is Landauer. The brothers’ work with Largus includes the selling off of a shipping agent in Singapore and to further develop trading operations, that after a partial sale to Taiwanese Tait, maintains the agency for Heineken in China, which means that the holding can be sold at a good profit in 2003.

For Landauer, that deals with seafood such as prawns/shrimps, octopus, etc., natural fibres and animal bi-products, they also see the possibility of expanding into industrial honey. With their own factory in Cambridge that prepares and packs the honey and supplies it in everything from 25 kilo drums to complete tanker trucks they manage to grow to be England’s largest producer of industrial honey before selling the honey operations, at a good profit, in 2007.

The other major foreign operation is Higman Marine, that after the acquisition of competitor Maryland Marine at the end of the 1990s, when the Salén brothers help with the financing, grows to be the third largest actor on the push-barge market in the USA, with a fleet of 240 vessels.