Small but efficient, this Harbour Main fish plant's focus is local

Near the mouth of the harbour and perched on the seashore in Harbour Main sits Variety Seafoods. The rectangular building isn't big, but it is packed with all the equipment needed to process cod, halibut and other fish. 

That small building produces fish cakes, chowder and other products sold at retailers across Newfoundland and Labrador, and its ability to pivot is one of the reasons owner Marshall Bursey says it's still in business. 

"When I came into the business, you know, of course, I came into it at a real poor time because the moratorium just started," Bursey said, referring to the 1992 shutdown of the northern cod fishery.  

"I saw that we were going to have to get bigger facilities, and what suits us better than a fish plant when you're in the fish business?"

Bursey, who traces his family back to 1748 in Newfoundland, is the fourth generation to work in the fishing business.

His great-great-grandfather, Uriah Bursey, had a lobster factory in Old Perlican and operated cod liver oil factories around the province.

Bursey's grandfather, William Joe Bursey, operated Fort Amherst Sea Foods in St. John's from 1934 to 1964.

What suits us better than a fish plant when you're in the fish business?- Marshall Bursey

His own father and namesake was a distributor of seafood products.

In 2003 Bursey bought the plant in Harbour Main and moved back into processing.

While the industry in Newfoundland and Labrador has largely been in a downturn, Variety Foods established a niche for itself, with its Conception Bay Centre plant concentrating on the local market.

Today the operation in Harbour Main employs 10 people at the plant and another six back at home office in St. John's.

Looking for workers

This season things are going well — so much so, Bursey is looking to hire an additional five people to help process cod and other species.

Extra workers would help Bursey carry on with other parts of his processing business because when the cod strikes, it's all they do and all other parts of his business stop.

He says labour is a real problem. 

"We advertise pretty well 24 hours around the clock but it seems like these days nobody wants to work in the seafood industry anymore. I think it's a generational thing," he told CBC Radio's The Broadcast. 

"It's no different than if you worked in any other kind of a food plant. In a fish plant, you have to have rubber boots and an apron and prepare for a little bit of dampness."

Bursey's plant looks like others with its modern stainless steel production line processing mostly cod.

The trimming line uses workers versus machines to tidy up the fillets, with workers spaced apart and separated by solid plastic barriers.

All of the fish is used, including heads and bones and other bits that are ground up and used to feed mink.

Cod skins are used to make gelatin.

"Back in my father's day, at Fort Amherst Sea Foods, they used to make glue to glue the boxes with that they'd sell," he said.

"They had a lot of things they did years ago, more innovation than what we do."

Focus is local

Bursey estimates that 75 per cent of the product is sold at local retail outlets.

His products, such as fish cakes, chowder, salt cod and cod tongues, can be found all over the province.

Bursey is setting up a secondary processing kitchen on the top floor of the plant, to start producing other products in Harbour Main.

While things are going well now, Bursey sees trouble up ahead, particularly with the N.L. economy as a whole. 

"The bottom has come out of the oil business," he said.

"The only place that we're going to be able to get money now is going to be from Ottawa. And you know this whole Hoover Dam fiasco and the rest of it," he said, referring to Muskrat Falls, "Ottawa is going to be the only one to bail us out, and if they do there's going to be terms."

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He thinks that'll mean a cut to the civil service, that people's wallets are going to shrink, which will in turn create trouble for local businesses. 

In the meantime, he is carrying on, spending his weeks keeping busy at the plant, and his weekends at the old family home in Old Perlican.

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