Seafood storage and shipping business opens
There’s something fishy going on in Westmount.
A new multi-use seafood storage and shipping operation has taken up residence in the former Co-op distribution centre, a giant warehouse facility located at 440 Keltic Drive.
The joint initiative between the Eskasoni First Nation and a pair of North Sydney brothers with decades of experience in the seafood industry, is expected to provide as many as 20 jobs once it is fully up and running.
The building is co-owned by Eskasoni and Jim and Allan Gillis, while the central Cape Breton First Nation is the owner/operator of Live Stor Sydney. The Gillis-owned Live Ship Logistics also plans to lease space to store its stateof-the-art live seafood container transport system.
Chief Leroy Denny said the operation is a perfect fit for Eskasoni, a community struggling with high unemployment and welfare dependence, and will only serve to enhance the First Nation’s presence in the local seafood industry.
“The unemployment rate is really high in Eskasoni and there are only so many jobs we can create within the community, so we have to reach out outside the community here in Cape Breton — more and more of our young people are graduating and they want jobs and opportunities and we want to give them that,” said Denny.
“So, not only do we have the capacity today to catch and deliver fish products at the wharf or to our suppliers, but now we can freeze it and store it and in the future deliver the product to market.”
The idea of the business surfaced earlier this year when North Sydney brothers Jim and Allan Gillis approached Eskasoni’s business development arm about participating in the joint initiative. By May, the new partnership had purchased the former Co-op warehouse and in mid-August the operation was underway with a skeleton crew of four workers dealing with more than 700,000 pounds of capelin that came in from Newfoundland.
And that’s just the start, said Jim Gillis, who expressed optimism that the new company will be able to utilize the entire 79,000 sq. ft. building that was used as a grocery warehouse, and included a large refrigerated section, for Cape Breton Co-op outlets before the co-operative shut down its food and gas outlets across the region in 2015.
He also said the nature of the business should insulate it against the seasonal nature of the fishing industry.
“We’re hoping it is not really seasonal because there are so many different species that are happening throughout the year, so depending on what is being caught, whether it is crab, shrimp, capelin, we’re hoping to have business through here throughout the whole year,” said Gillis.
“It gives processors another place to store their product, somewhere a little closer than they are used to, it might cut
down on some of the trucking needed to get to a cold storage place — and, of course, there’s an effort put together to bring a port to Sydney, a shipping port, and if that happens we think we’ll be in an excellent location to service that port.”
The building also includes numerous rooms and offices. Steve Parsons, general manager of Eskasoni Corporate Services, said plans also call for the leasing of those spaces, possibly as sites for fishery industry training.