Cooke Aquaculture
“Can a family-owned aquaculture conglomerate build a fully centralized treasury and in-house banking infrastructure capable of managing global liquidity and FX across 15 countries without a dedicated banking license?”
Founded in 1985 as a single Atlantic salmon farm, Cooke Aquaculture grew through aggressive acquisitions across wild fisheries and aquaculture globally to become the largest private family-owned seafood company with 13,000 employees in 15 countries. As the company's multi-national treasury complexity grew — spanning 400+ bank accounts across multiple ERPs and currencies — Cooke pivoted to build a sophisticated treasury infrastructure, launching an in-house bank ('Cooke Bank') in 2020 via Kyriba to centralize liquidity, automate intercompany FX netting, and standardize global payments. The embedded finance story here is corporate treasury modernization rather than customer-facing fintech: Kyriba serves as the financial operating layer replacing fragmented banking relationships.