Bristol Seafood adds nearby building to grow its retail business

Portland seafood processor Bristol Seafood acquired an additional facility to support continued growth of its retail lines.

The building is at 284 Commercial St., a stone’s throw from the company’s headquarters at 5 Portland Fish Pier.

“I’m looking out my window and I can see the new facility,” Bristol Seafood President and CEO Peter Handy told Mainebiz.

Bristol Seafood bought the 7,993-square-foot commercial building from Freedom Fish LLC for $1.385 million. 

Jon Rizzo of the Boulos Co. and Jay Wise of WRE Commercial Brokers brokered the deal.

The facility will be dedicated to production of Bristol’s My Fish Dish, Seafood Singles, and Grab & Go products. The additional space will brings more capacity and automation to the company’s retail business. It also frees up space in the original, 30,000-square-foot facility, which in turn supports the expanding needs of Bristol’s foodservice and contract manufacturing partners.

At the new building, the automation features will include traditional vacuum packing, breathable skin pack, vacuum skin pack, automated labeling, batch weighing and portioning.

Renovations, now underway, will include redoing the floors and refrigeration, and installing automated seafood processing equipment that’s been designed for the space. 

“It’s going to be the perfect spot to meet our needs,” said Handy.

The facility is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2022.

Retail growth

The company launched its ready-to-cook retail lines several years ago and interest has picked up throughout North America over the past year, said Handy. 

“We’ve added capacity to keep up with customer demand,” he said. “It was time to add space.”

From 2019 to 2020, sales of its retail lines doubled. From 2020 to 2021 retail is on pace to triple or even quadruple, he said. Distribution is primarily throughout North America, including the West Coast and Canada. 

Consumer interest in seafood has grown over the past year, as the industry pivoted to grow retail and e-commerce offerings.

Bristol Seafood anticipated that trend when it launched it retail lines before the pandemic.

“We know that consumers want trusted, quality seafood that’s simple to cook at home,” said Handy. “We’ve designed product lines that aim to do that. It’s been part of our goals for a number of years. The pandemic accelerated those trends.”

The packaged lines are designed to facilitate consumer use, he said.

“With the My Fish Dish line, for example, the fish is already seasoned, prepared and portioned,” he said. “The instructions take a lot of the guesswork out of making a quality seafood dish at home.”

The types of seafood going into the retail lines include line-caught haddock, Atlantic salmon, wild sockeye salmon and coldwater shrimp, he said. The company sources seafood from across North America and around the world.

“We have stringent requirements when it come to quality and sustainability,” he said.

100 employees and counting

Established in 1992 in Portland, Bristol Seafood LLC is a private wholesaler and processor that specializes in locally caught seafood such as sea scallops, mussels and lobster. It also maintains relationships with fishermen abroad who provide products such as haddock from Norway and scallops from Japan.

Bristol is a founding member of the Gulf of Maine Responsibly Harvested program and a recipient of Marine Stewardship Council’s Chain of Custody standard. Recently, Bristol became the first seafood company awarded Fair Trade certification for a U.S. fishery, North Atlantic scallops.

In addition to retail, food service and contract manufacturing are also important markets, said Handy.

“We work with customers throughout the U.S.,” he said.

The existing facility employs about 100 people and has capabilities such as filleting, flash freezing, bagging and vacuum packing.

“We’ve been growing the size of our team for a while and continue to hire across the board,” said Handy.