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| Last updated at 1:37 PM on 15/01/08 |
Processing begins at Cooke plant in Harbour Breton 
MATTHEW MOLLOY
The Coaster
Cooke Aquaculture have begun processing salmon at the Harbour Breton fish plant, and amidst adapting to new equipment and a new way of doing things, everything seems to be moving according to plan.
"It's pretty exciting to finally be moving fish off the farms and into the plant, and to see them being processed. I've been told that the people themselves have been extremely positive and our management is very excited about the attitudes of the employees," said Nell Halse, director of communications with Cooke Aquaculture. "We still have some bugs that have to be worked out - there are always mechanical glitches that have to be worked out, IT (information technology) issues that are still being worked out, but it's very exciting to finally be moving forward."
Cooke Aquaculture has its people down from New Brunswick at the Harbour Breton plant to help with the transition phase - including people from the IT department, quality control team and harvesting people. It will take a little time for plant workers to get used to the changes, as times, and equipment, have changed from the fish plant of old.
"The equipment is for salmon processing itself and it's very much high-tech stuff. Everything we're sending out is fresh fish and it's a little different than processing ground fish, and especially frozen product," said Ms. Halse. "Also, we're talking about high-end fresh fish. When the fish come in from off the farm it's only a matter of hours before they're in the plant. That's head-on product, it's basically the whole fish that goes out. As a company, what we've developed in the past couple of years is the value-added side of the business. So every time you cut fish an extra time you're dealing with value-added product. That's a new thing for that plant, as well.
"Back in December we had about 20 people from Harbour Breton travel down to New Brunswick to work in the plant there for training purposes, and there are another 14 people right now in New Brunswick for the same reasons - Learning about the equipment and learning the way we do things," Ms. Halse added. "There's been a lot of traffic back and forth as we get the process up and running in Harbour Breton."
The plant officially opened Jan. 3 and the first fillet line went in the following day. The plant currently employs about 84 people and that number should go up relatively soon.
"Right now we have about 84 people working in the plant on the two lines, and that also includes harvesting people," said Ms. Halse. "Hopefully in another couple of weeks we'll have a second fillet line up and running and that will involve an additional 30 employees. So we'll soon be working at full compliment."
Cooke Aquaculture has the plant leased for one year from the Barry Group. Therefore, Cook Aquaculture had to make sure they enough product for the one year, in which time they'll have to make a decision regarding their future in Harbour Breton.
"We wanted to get enough production so we can keep that plant operating on a year-round basis. That's why it was important that when we went into the south coast that we went in with a big enough scale so it's economically viable. In terms of being a plant, you got to have enough fish to keep going year-round. The intention is to have between 2.5 and 3 million fish going into sites each year so not only do you still have this rotation of sites, but you also have fish coming up to market size each year," said Ms. Halse.
"We have an agreement with the Barry group. We leased (the plant) from them for one year. We'll have to make some long-term plans about where we'll be processing fish in the long-term. Obviously we would like to have our own facility and we looked at a number of options before this. We initially looked at the Harbour Breton plant to purchase it ourselves but we also looked at Fortune. All of our options are open for our going forward after that. Once the bugs are worked out and things are working smoothly, I'm sure that Ross Butler (vice-president of Cooke Aquaculture) and his team will really be digging into what a long-term solution for Cookes will be. Are we going to build a plant somewhere? Will we go back and look at Fortune? Is there an opportunity long-term for Harbour Breton? These are all the things that we'll be looking at."
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15/01/08
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