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Commercial Fisheries News
Volume 33 Number 8
April 2006
Gloucester small pelagics group grows again
GLOUCESTER, MA - The small pelagics fishing, processing, and gear operation at the Jodrey State Fish Pier has grown again.
The common share-holder conglomeration – Cape Seafoods Inc., Western Sea Fishing Company, and Swan Net East Coast Services Ltd. – has recently bought both an existing freezer company as well as real estate to expand its gear business.
“We officially took over the cold store and blast freezer from Allied Cold Storage (at the pier) on February 1,” said Dave Ellenton, vice president of Cape Seafoods Inc., which buys and processes fresh herring and mackerel for food and bait.
In addition, Swan Net East Coast Services Ltd. purchased a 4.8-acre plot at the nearby Blackburn Industrial Park where it will construct a 22,000 square foot gear building.
The small pelagics-focused venture has expanded steadily since its arrival here about five years ago.
Added capabilities
Taking over the red brick façade freezer, which conveniently sits adjacent to the Cape Seafoods Inc. processing plant on the pier, gives the operation more flexibility, according to Ellenton.
The facility has 250 tons of blast freezing capacity (at -20°C), he said, and 4,500 pallet spaces, approximately 9 million pounds, of capacity in the cold store freezer.
“We hired six new employees, which included two former Allied workers, to run the freezer,” Ellenton added.
If need be, Cape Seafoods Inc. can now process and freeze fish on weekends and holidays.
The new, environmentally friendly gear building will feature a concrete foundation, combined cinder block and glass panel walls, and a metal roof complete with passive solar heating and cooling.
“(It will) be a one-stop gear shop that will carry everything from netting to trawl wire and will service all fisheries (in addition to midwater trawling),” said Gerry O’Neill, an Irish-born principal in all three companies at the Jodrey State Fish Pier.
“We will manufacture complete nets and codends and also repair nets there,” he said. “We will service Canadian and (US) East and West coast fleets. We’ll try it overseas and wherever there might be a market.”
O’Neill designed the building himself, which includes separate net manufacturing and net repairing runways, each with an overhead traveling block. The far end of the net manufacturing runway will be outfitted with a mounted hydraulic net reel that will be used to wind up netting.
Current Swan Net ace netmaker and repairman Shaun Heena will act as general manager of the new building.
The sizable facility will enable Heena to drive the company’s flat bed service truck, fitted with a hydraulic power block, into the building and stretch out the damaged net on the floor.
O’Neill expects the new building, which is being constructed by Gloucester developer Jay McNiff, to be finished by December.
Of the expansion, O’Neill said, “You have to grow with the times. Otherwise, you will be left behind.”
Peter K. Prybot
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