FISHING FOR BUSINESS
Eskasoni moving ahead with live-storage lobster system
Eskasoni buys live-storage system that can handle 250,000 pounds of lobster.
Eskasoni First Nation is continuing to ramp up its economic development efforts in the fishery, with the recent purchase of capacity to livestore up to 250,000 pounds of lobster.
It’s only one of the fishery-related ventures the band is pursuing, with the value of the project involving four business lines of almost $3 million, an Eskasoni official says.
Last year Eskasoni announced a new multi-use seafood storage and shipping operation at the former Co-op distribution centre located at 440 Keltic Dr., a joint venture with Jim and Allan Gillis of North Sydney, who both have extensive experience in the industry.
Steve Parsons, general manager of Eskasoni Corporate Services, said the intention was to have a three-fold service centre — cold storage, which has been in place since September and is able to hold 2.2 million pounds of inventory; the second is the coming introduction of live storage capacity for lobster; the final phase is in transportation of product.
There are currently five people employed there but once all the streams are online, Parsons expects that it could grow to upwards of 20. The Gillis brothers manage the day-to-day operations, he added.
The live-storage lobster system has been ordered and is expected to begin being installed in the next couple of weeks and will be in place for lobster season, Parsons said.
“That will give local processors, local fishermen an opportunity to store their lobster in an enclosed, controlled, monitored temperature system versus out in the harbour, where they take the risk of water temperature increases and/or rain, which has an effect on the lobster,” he said.
Parsons said for the transportation component they
currently have four reefer trucks and a couple of tractors and they are hauling weekly to Toronto, Chicago and Montreal.
“The intention is to take those four reefer trailers and convert them to the bioinnovations live-storage system to hold 25,000 pounds of live lobster,” to eventually transport product into the Texas and Florida markets, Parsons said.
The intention is to do two of those conversions this year and add two other trailers in 2019.
Parsons said Eskasoni will have a service contract with Live Ship to engage with its trucking company to deliver live lobsters to markets in the U.S.
It’s important to be able to offer live lobster transport as it’s increasingly what the market wants, Parsons said.
“With the particular technology that we’ve engaged in, the lobster will be taken from the water, put into a crate system on the back of the lobster boats,” he said. “Those crates are to be delivered to our live storage facility to be held in a controlled environment … It’s less invasiveness on the lobster, they’re not moved around as much, they’re not transported back and forth from crates.”
The less lobsters are handled, the better the quality of the meat, Parsons said.
“The market is willing to pay a premium price for lobsters of higher quality,” he said.
They also plan to offer flashfreezing of bait and store bait for fishermen.
Eskasoni did receive funding from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency but Parsons declined to indicate the amount as an official announcement hasn’t yet taken place.
A search of the ACOA public project information website indicates an ACOA grant of $500,000 to Eskasoni band council and total government funding of $900,000 to establish a storage facility for live and frozen fish products. The project completion date is listed as March 31.