The Goodfellow family’s investment vehicle Amalgamated Dairies has called it quits on being a substantial shareholder of seafood company Sanford after cutting its 6% stake down to just 1.3% today.

Sanford traded more than four million shares by early evening while trading more than $16.6m in value. The stock was down 0.2% to $4.26.

Amalgamated Dairies was once Sanford’s once biggest shareholder but it sold $5 million worth of Sanford shares in 2016 for a 2.3% discount. 

In 2017, it further reduced its holding in the fishing company from 27% to 24% – or $20.8m.

Its stake in Sanford now sits at just a little over 1%. 

In other share market news, the S&P/NZX 50 Index decreased 64 points, or 0.57%, to 11,294.52. Turnover was $116.9m.

Hamilton Hindin Greene investment adviser Jeremy Sullivan said NZ’s market had “firmed up” today but no individual sectors were standing out in terms of doing the heavy lifting.

Fisher and Paykel Healthcare and energy retailer stocks such as Meridian Energy and Mercury rallied today, he said.

Fisher and Paykel was up 3.3% to $19.98, Meridian Energy was up 1.1% to $4.60, and Mercury rose 2.4% to $5.435. 

NZ King Salmon fell 6% to 23.5 cents on very light trading. The salmon farmer told the NZX last week that it had been given the green light to begin farming the first open ocean finfish site in NZ.

Retirement village developer Summerset Group was down 1.4% to $9.55 after it announced today that it has bought a seventh property in Victoria, Australia – for an undisclosed price. 

The 9.9-hectare site is in Drysdale on the Bellarine Peninsula, the eastern mouth of Port Phillip. Chief executive Scott Scoullar said the area had recently benefited from significant infrastructure investment, which included a A$117m (NZ$128m) bypass to reduce traffic.

Radius Residential was up 3.4% to 30.5 cents and Ryman Healthcare edged up 0.13% to $7.99.

Sullivan said as Ryman was reporting its half-year results tomorrow, investors would be watching closely.

“All eyes will be on their development margins,” he told BusinessDesk. 

With inflation so high in the construction industry, if the aged-care provider could keep those margins, the stock would be rewarded, Sullivan said.

However, possible headwinds from the rapidly rising cost of building materials meant the stock could head in the other direction.

Fuel infrastructure company Channel Infrastructure gave a 2023 trading update. Revenue for the 2023 financial period is now expected in the range of $125m to $128m – up from its previous guidance of $116m to $120m.

Channel Infrastructure chief executive Naomi James said the company’s long-term contracts gave it “protection and benefit” in this inflationary environment.

The stock was up 1.4% to $1.48.

There was a lot of trading in shares of infant formula company Synlait Milk over the course of the day – almost five million shares. Synlait ended the day up 0.4% to $2.96.

Today, the NZ dollar traded at 61.40 US cents at 3pm in Wellington, up slightly from 61.37 cents yesterday.