Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Mazzetta sells fish plant for $9.3M

April 29, 2020 — llinois-based Mazzetta Company has finally sold the Gloucester facility that housed its Gloucester Seafood Processing operations. It was sold to The Grossman Companies for $9.3 million, according to records obtained from the Essex County Register of Deeds.

The Grossman Companies, based in Quincy, is a family-run real estate investment and management firm that owns about 2.5 million square feet of commercial and residential properties throughout New England and specializes in acquisitions, private lending, property management and brokerage.

Jacob M. Grossman, president of The Grossman Companies, said Tuesday the company is looking to lease the 65,000 square-foot property at 21-29 Great Republic Drive to a single tenant. The facility, Grossman said, is proving especially attractive among a range of food-related businesses.

“There’s been really, really good interest already,” said Grossman, the fifth generation of his family in the business whose Eastern Massachusetts roots date back 120 years, starting with Grossman Lumber. “We hope to have news on a tenant in a relatively short time.”

He said the facility in the Blackburn Industrial Park, which originally housed the Good Harbor Filet company, is emblematic of the types of properties The Grossman Companies seek for its real estate portfolio.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Mazzetta offers reason for Gloucester Seafood Processing shutdown

August 23, 2018 — Actions by the U.S. Department of Commerce prompted the Mazzetta Company to close its Gloucester Seafood Processing plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park in December 2016, according to an opinion piece the company’s founder penned for a fishing industry website.

Tom Mazzetta, founder and president of the Illinois-based seafood company that bears his family’s name, criticized the Commerce Department for forcing shrimp importers such as Mazzetta to pay additional duties on seafood imports years after the initial import duty was paid.

“The result is that three years after importing shrimp into the U.S. and paying an initial duty on that product, the Commerce Department will often come back years later and announce that importers owe millions of dollars more in duties than they originally anticipated,” Mazzetta wrote in the piece that appeared online Tuesday.

Mazzetta then tied the Commerce Department policy directly to his company’s decision to shutter Gloucester Seafood Processing and jettison about 200 full-time jobs.

“Mazzetta Company can speak first hand (sic) about the impact of the Commerce Department coming back three years after the fact and unexpectedly asking for millions,” Mazzetta wrote. “As many of you know, we were forced to close a processing facility in Gloucester, MA, and eliminate 200 American jobs as a result of this ‘gotcha’ game.”

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Word of Gloucester Seafood Processing reopening catches city leaders by surprise

April 3, 2018 — The comments last week by the founder of the Mazzetta Company that the seafood processor will resume processing fresh fish at its largely dormant Gloucester Seafood Processing plant caught many by surprise — including city officials.

Tom Mazzetta, the chief executive officer of the Illinois-based seafood conglomerate that bears his family’s name, told a respected fishing website that the Gloucester Seafood Processing plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park will resume operations before the year is out.

“We’ll be processing the finest fish in New England before the end of the year,” Mazzetta was quoted as saying in the Undercurrentnews.com piece.

On Monday morning, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said the city has not heard a peep from anyone at the Mazzetta Company about re-firing daily operations at Gloucester Seafood Processing which the company unexpectedly — and without explanation — shuttered in December 2016, a little more than a year after it first opened.

“We haven’t heard a word, not from anyone in Illinois or from anyone associated with the plant here,” Romeo Theken said during an event Monday with NOAA Regional Administrator Mike Pentony at the city’s alewife fishway in West Gloucester.

According to the online story posted late last week, Mazzetta declined to expand on the company’s plans beyond his simple statement.

He wouldn’t say if Gloucester Seafood Processing also would be processing lobsters, as it did when it first opened in 2015, or what the size and composition of the new work force will be following the re-opening.

He didn’t reveal whether the property at 21-29 Great Republic Drive, which was listed online for sale last December (with an asking price of $17 million) will be coming off the market. He also refused to shed any light on why Gloucester Seafood Processing was closed in the first place.

Mazzetta did not respond Monday to phone calls from the Gloucester Daily Times seeking clarification and amplification on his comments to the website.

Mazzetta, with the assistance of city and state tax sweeteners, bought the former Good Harbor Fillet property in the industrial park for about $5 million in 2014 from High Liner Foods.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times