Run on salmon fuels $4.5M Ducktrap expansion
photo / Matt Dodge
From left, Ducktrap River of Maine's General Manager Don Cynewski, Plant Manager Dennis Harris and Sales Manager Jeff Johnson stand outside the company's Belfast headquarters, which will begin a $4.5 million expansion to double production by September of this year.
In the blustery days of April, the Belfast headquarters of Ducktrap River of Maine sends out a pleasant aroma of woodsmoke and fish. The combination will likely intensify as the company embarks on an upgrade to capture new customers and capitalize on market trends.
With the plant operating at capacity and demand for the company's Maine-smoked salmon and seafood growing, Ducktrap will soon start to double its production capacity as part of a $4.5 million investment from its Norway-based parent company.
"We are currently at full capacity and are unable to increase sales any further in the existing facility," says General Manager Don Cynewski.
Despite running its smoking system 24 hours a day, six days a week, Cynewski says the company has been forced to turn away larger customers.
That circumstance follows four years in which the company has almost doubled its sales, from $17 million in 2009 to $30 million last year. That sales growth, Cynewski says, "has not been driven by one big account, it's all across the board."
In the next two years, the 120-employee company plans to hire 30 to 50 new workers as it eyes more sales in the retail market, which Cynewski says are outpacing sales to the foodservice industry.
"In the future, I think the opportunity for us is more in retail," he says.
Ducktrap currently sells its products through major grocery chains like Publix, Shaw's, Hannaford, Trader Joe's, Stop & Shop and Whole Foods.
The expansion — underwritten by Ducktrap's Norway-based parent company, Marine Harvest — will start in the next few weeks and focus on the company's smoking operation, slicing/packing line and freezer capacity.
The work is scheduled for completion by Sept. 1 "to ramp up for the holiday season," Cynewski says.
In the last year, Cynewski says a major driver of demand for Ducktrap's flagship salmon products comes from increased regulatory scrutiny of cold smoked salmon from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Responding to an increase in cases of listeria — a bacteria that can cause meningitis or sepsis — the FDA has implemented new safety guidelines that can pose a challenge for smaller producers, Cynewski says. But Ducktrap is well-positioned to manage the increased oversight.
"It probably has [helped us grow our business]," Cynewski says. "Cold smoked salmon is 65% of our business and it's the [product] the FDA has been placing the most emphasis on."
The plant processes farm-raised Atlantic salmon from Europe and Chile, wild Sockeye salmon from Alaska — "probably our fastest growing item right now," says Cynewski — as well as mackerel, trout, whitefish and shellfish. In smoked salmon alone, Ducktrap produces 240,000 individual two-ounce servings per week.
Plant Manager Dennis Harris says the increased FDA attention on listeria might be pushing some producers out of the market, but will ultimately benefit the industry. Listeria-related salmon recalls have risen in the last few months, with 11 separate recalls since November of 2012. In 2011, there were a total of six recalls.
"It cost a lot of money to do things right, but when someone does something wrong, everyone stops buying [salmon]," Harris says. "So what's good for any of us is good for all of us."
That's particularly true for Ducktrap.
The company recently earned the Safe Quality Food Institute's highest level of certification for its products, SQF Level 3. Harris says he's not aware of another U.S. smokehouse certified at the same level.
Preparations to earn the SQF cost Ducktrap an estimated $50,000, but Cynewski says the benefits outweigh the costs.
"When you have a major customer, they want to deal with somebody who isn't going to cause them a lot of issues later," Cynewski says. "SQF is a good sign that we're doing things the way we are supposed to."
Cynewski says domestic consumer preferences are also changing. While he's not sure if smoked salmon will ever become a staple of the American diet in the same way it has is some European countries (France consumes more smoked salmon than the entire United States, despite having one-fifth the population), he says demand "has really gone up".
That demand has steadily increased since the company's founding by Des Fitzgerald in 1978 as Ducktrap River Fish Farm, Cynewski says.
"It's fortunate that when [Fitzgerald] started, farmed salmon worldwide started to develop," Cynewski says. "He was kind of there when it all began."
The company moved to the Belfast Business Park in 1991 and expanded its facility to 45,000 square feet in 1998. This year's expansion will increase its footprint to 66,000 square feet. Marine Harvest acquired Ducktrap in 2001.
While Ducktrap does not source its salmon from Maine, there is a little bit of the Pine Tree State in every vacuum-sealed package. The company's smoking process uses a blend of four different woods — apple, cherry, maple and oak — the first two of which are planted on site, and the latter come from Maine mills.
The smoking process also requires the infusion of 10,000 cubic feet of air per minute to help dry fish, giving Ducktrap an advantage over some of the more metropolitan players in the smoked salmon market.
"One of our biggest competitors is in New York City, so if you have a piece of fish being blown with air, would you rather have it in the Bronx or in Belfast, Maine?" says Harris.
Ducktrap is already well known in the specialty food markets, having appeared everywhere from the Masters golf tournament to the White House. Sales Manager Jeff Johnson says spreading the word about smoked salmon is an integral part of the company's growth.
"We want to extend beyond bagels and cream cheese and get more into recipe development," Johnson says.
Cynewski's favorite way to enjoy Ducktrap's smoked salmon?
"It's a great lunch sandwich with bread and cukes, and great on eggs," he says. "Just don't cook it. That's my pet peeve."
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