The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Bait, Asian menus keep eel business afloat
MIDDLETOWN » Months after receiving a $50,000 state Department of Agriculture grant in March, Bill Clayton has continued to expand his Marine Bait Wholesale business in a former typewriter factory.
The award, Clayton says, has helped expand the 5,000-square-foot business in the city-owned Remington Rand business incubator space and has given himthe ability to buy more equipment for his eels.
Before the grant, he had one-third less ofwhat he has today.
The grant, through the Agriculture Department’s Farm Transition Grant and Farm Viability Grant programs, is designed to increase farm production, promote Connecticut Grown products and create jobs.
The $49,000 award was earmarked for an aquaculture production system for the raising of wild eels for bait. It gave Clayton time to do more research on what makes eels thrive best in their tanks. His degree in marine science and educational background in both organic chemistry and oceanology have allowed him to keep careful track of the densities and temperatures of the tanks.
One of the hardest things he’s had to do, however, is figure out the eels’ eating habits.
“It takes six months to train them to eat. That’s the hardest part, is figuring out what they like to eat. You kind of have to force feed them.”
Although eels naturally eat shrimp in the wild, Clayton has experimented with his own food source and believes his research is one of the reasons his eels are so popular abroad.
So what is this special food source that have the competitors buzzing? It’s a secret he’ll never tell.
“There’s actually no local competition,” he states. “All my competition is from multi-million dollar companies abroad.”
With constant demands for his product abroad in Asia, Clayton says he works a very long week. With so many eels to tend to and raise to market size, Clayton has to be very detailoriented to constantly keep control of all the tanks. Clayton’s biggest tank holds 400 pounds of eels and in the chipping room alone, there’s approximately 2,600 pounds of them.
“One gallon of water is equal to 8 pounds and transport in excess equals to 6.5 pounds per gallons,” he states.
Every day, Clayton walks into the farm and goes around to do triage. After fixing anything broken from the night before, he feeds the eels and starts the shipments for the day.
If he’s receiving eels, he decontaminates them in order to rid them of the pathogens and any other contaminates they hold. Because eels are cannibalistic, Clayton separates them by size.
When there’s a shipment going out, Clayton has to separate the eels and put the ones he plans to ship in the bucket.
“The hardest part of this is that eels have to be selected by hand. It takes six hours to do a ton.”
He then drives one of his trucks to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York to deliver and ship the eels abroad. His popular clients, those in Japan and Hong Kong, use the eels as a staple food aswell as for bait.
To help with the high demand, he likes to employ anywhere from two to five people at a time, most of which are 55 and over. He says he enjoys helping the community by hiring people in town who are unemployed and want a job.
In addition to the eels, Clayton also sells tropical killifish as pets, something he’s been doing since he was 14 years old.
Clayton’s business began as a self-funded operation. With the grant, he’s able to have some wiggle room with what he can do. Although all of his profit depends mostly on the future of the eel market, Clayton says he isn’t worried much beyond the present.
“I’ve been through four recessions now,” he says. “I try not to worry about things I can’t control it.”
Still, Clayton knows he has a lot of work ahead of him. He plans on purchasing new tanks and heat pumps to help control the temperature of those tanks. Once he gets everything settled, he wants to create a systemline and make things more efficient. Any profit he makes, he plans to reinvest in more equipment.
Although Clayton’s in the middle of renovating, his childrens’ drawings and writings hung along the front walls brighten his workplace. When he’s not at the farm, he spends time with his wife and their two young children, all of which have been supportive of him and his job.
From what he’s learned from his own business, he advices anyone from younger generations looking to become entrepreneurs like himself to just dive right into it.
“There’s never a good time to start a business,” he says laughing, “You just have to do it and be prepared to work hard.”