March 15, 2021 — True North Seafood is showcasing its new frozen wild-caught red crab product at Seafood Expo North America Reconnect – running from 15 to 19 March – in advance of a planned spring launch in the U.S.
The new product is 10.6 ounces of wild-caught deep-sea red crab sourced from Uruguay and frozen at sea. It contains 100 percent wild-caught crab meat with no additives, True North Seafood Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson told SeafoodSource.
October 29, 2020 — A division of New Brunswick seafood giant Cooke Inc. has acquired Mariner Seafood LLC of New Bedford, Mass., expanding the family-owned company’s operations in the United States.
True North Seafood, the flagship brand and processing arm of Cooke, purchased Mariner Seafood for US$2.75 million after the U.S. company filed for bankruptcy protection last month. The sale was approved by a Massachusetts court Monday.
The sale includes two processing plants in the port of New Bedford capable of processing more than 8,000 tonnes a year of seafood product, including scallops, haddock, cod, salmon and shrimp.
Glenn Cooke, CEO of Cooke, said it has been a dream of the family seafood company to have a presence in the historic, high-value fishing port.
“We now have over 4,000 Cooke employees in 22 U.S. states and we will continue to invest and grow our New Bedford processing operations,” he said in a statement.
Cooke, which started in rural New Brunswick in 1985 with three employees, now has a global workforce of more than 10,000 employees in 10 countries. It claims to be the largest privately held family seafood company in the world.
September 15, 2020 — Here’s a good story out of the South: As you might imagine fishermen in Louisiana and along the Gulf of Mexico have had a terrible time of it through the late summer, with tropical storms and hurricanes tearing up the landscape, disrupting fishing and adding to the general misery of life in the time of pandemic.
In North Carolina, the North Carolina Fisheries Association and True North Seafood decided to help their fishing friends in Louisiana by sending a truckload of supplies down to the bayou.
“We received more than 20,000 pounds of ice, fish and cleaning supplies,” Frank Randol, treasurer of the Gulf Seafood Foundation and owner of Randol’s Seafood, told Gulf Seafood News. “We are in the process of working with the United Way, Second Harvest Food Bank and others to get these supplies into the hands of those that need it the most. We need to keep the attention focused on the damage in the Gulf, and how it has affected our fishermen because they not only feed their families, but their communities and whole country.”
You may have noticed that we’ve had a slew of stories in the past few weeks on the various federal and state programs to financially assist fishermen and others in the seafood industry that have been crushed economically by the ongoing pandemic or had markets disappear because of retaliatory trade tariffs from U.S. trade partners. It’s a pretty confusing landscape right now, so we hope we helped clear up some of the details.
Last week, we wrote that the state Division of Marine Fisheries had finally mailed out the applications to commercial fishermen for funds allocated by Congress in the CARES Act. The state got $28 million in all to help mitigate the economic damage to its seafood industry from the COVID-19 pandemic, and commercial fishermen will split $11.8 million of that haul.
We mentioned the completed applications are due Oct. 10. What we didn’t mention — because the information was not available until after the story went to press — was when the successful applicants might expect to see their slice of the loot. Now we know.
September 14, 2020 — New Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.A.-based Mariner Seafood filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Monday, 14 September, with Cooke Aquaculture’s True North Seafood lined up as the stalking horse bidder for its assets.
Court documents filed by Mariner Seafood acknowledge the company defaulted on its revolving USD 10 million (EUR 8.4 million) loan from Wells Fargo, and that the company had been exploring options such as selling assets or facilitating an equity investment to improve its cashflow and repay its debt.
September 10, 2020 — The destructive winds and storm surge of Hurricane Laura are now unwanted memories. Repairing shattered homes, businesses and lives along the storms path in southwestern Louisiana remain the task at hand. To easy the pain fishermen are reaching out to help fishermen. A truckload of supplies donated by the North Carolina Fisheries Association and True North Seafood has reached Louisiana and being readied to help those in need.
“We received more than 20,000 lbs. of ice, fish and cleaning supplies,” said Frank Randol, treasurer of the Gulf Seafood Foundation and owner of Randol’s Seafood. “The True North Seafood truck was unloaded at a cold-storage unit in Lafayette. We are in the process of working with the United Way, Second Harvest Food Bank and others to get these supplies into the hands of those that need it most.”
According to Randol everything along the southwestern Louisiana coast is a disaster. “The hurricane came ashore two weeks ago, but already the attention of the nation has started to shift elsewhere,” he said. “We need to keep the attention focused on the damage in the Gulf, and how it has affected our fishermen because they not only feed their family, but their community and whole country.”
October 2, 2019 — Samuels Seafood has been chosen as the exclusive distributor of Jail Island Salmon, a product packed by Cooke-owned True North Seafood, according to a 1 October announcement.
Jail Island Salmon are raised in North Atlantic waters off of the East Coast of Canada, and provide “a superior food-handling experience for chefs, and a first-class dining experience for guests,” Jail Island Salmon Company said. The product is hand-graded to ensure year-round quality consistency and is available as whole fish, fillets, and portions.
March 19, 2019 — It was like the first day of school when Martha Stewart’s culinary director, Thomas Joseph, arrived at the 2019 Seafood Expo North America event in Boston, Massachusetts on its opening day.
Joseph, who is a 2017 James Beard Award winner, pulled up to the continent’s largest seafood trade event with the four initial offerings under the Martha Stewart brand’s latest seafood product line in tow, ready for their debut. The products were created in partnership with Cooke Inc.’s True North Seafood.
“We’re super-excited,” Joseph told SeafoodSource on Sunday, 17 March, as SENA19 roared to life. “Today was like the first day of school coming here, like I’m dropping my kids off.”
If you ask Joseph and Cooke Vice President of Public Relations Joel Richardson, the kids will be more than all right. Each a “labor of love,” the product line’s first outing includes Atlantic Salmon with Lemon Herb Butter; Sockeye Salmon with Miso Butter; Wild Alaska Pollock with Southwest Spice Blend; and a Seafood Medley (Wild Alaska Pollock, Atlantic Salmon, and Bay Scallops) with Herb Spice Blend. The line is expected to hit grocery store shelves in the United States in May 2019.
February 26, 2019 — Diversified seafood group Cooke is partnering with US retail and lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart on a new range of value-added seafood products using raw material from its global farmed and wild supply companies.
Cooke, under its True North Seafood sales arm, is teaming up on the range with Sequential Brands Group, which licenses a range of consumer brands, including Martha Stewart’s, the seafood company told Undercurrent News. The range will launch next month and will be on show at the upcoming Boston seafood show, held in the East Coast US city from March 17-19.
The product line offers a range of True North products accompanied by a Martha Stewart signature butter flavor or spice blend. Packaging will also include an easy to follow recipe created by Stewart’s “test kitchen” team, the company said. These include Atlantic salmon with lemon herb butter; sockeye salmon with miso butter; pollock with a southwest spice blend, and a seafood medley – using pollock, salmon, and bay scallops — with a herb spice blend.
“Knowing where my seafood comes from is very important to me, and I’ve enjoyed and served True North Seafood to family and friends for years,” said Stewart, in a statement.