PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — August 3, 2013 — Keith A. Decker arrived in 2008 as president and chief operating offer of High Liner Foods just as the international seafood company was expanding through acquisition and beginning a modernization effort at the Portsmouth plant that's been a landmark along Interstate 95 since the 1960s.
Once known as National Sea Products, the organization was transformed in the 1990s from a fishing company that sold the fish it caught to a marketing company that finds and prepares the fish its customers want.
Consumers would recognize the company's products on their retail grocery store shelves under the Fisher Boy or Sea Cuisine name, while club stores like Sam's Club and Costco carry the High Liner label. High Liner also serves the restaurant industry, including the McDonald's Filet-O-Fish.
In the past five years, the Nova Scotia-based company, traded on the Canadian stock exchange, has acquired companies in Massachusetts and Virginia while investing heavily in New Hampshire operations.
Why the name change from National Sea Products to High Liner Foods?
National Sea Products renamed the company to High Liner Foods some time back in 1997 or around there. I think a lot of that was to reflect the change from a fishing company to a seafood marketing company. National Sea Products at one time controlled vast fishing resources in Eastern Canada, but when those fisheries collapsed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we had to go out and change our strategy from selling fish into the marketplace, to sourcing on a global scale to provide product to our customers. It was a dramatic shift in the organization, and High Liner Foods better represented what we were doing.
How has the plant changed to adapt to your new mission?
We've invested significant amounts of money in this plant over the last couple of years. I would say when we're all done with what we've planned for this facility, we will have invested in excess of 25 million. Around 2009 to 2010, we installed a new high-speed processing line for 7.1 million. We put a new ammonia freezer in with ammonia lines across the roof. We've also added an addition in the back of the facility, a larger maintenance shop, facing I-95, just last year.
A lot of capital has been invested to modernize the facility because we have a long-term interest in this plant. We're going to be here for a long time. The plant was built in 1967, so it's an old plant, and the improvements we're making are also to meet increased regulatory and environmental concerns. We're changing ceilings inside the plant; changing the workflow patterns, so there have been a lot of infrastructure improvements.
Have your employment levels gone up, down or remained steady in the past five years?
This plant has roughly 190 hourly or salaried employees. Those are full-time employees. We also have some part-time workers or temporary employees, depending on the volume of work. On any given day, there are roughly 190 employees and about 60 temps. I would say that has been pretty consistent over the years.
Read the full Q&A at the New Hampshire Union Leader