Labrador Shrimp Company

A rising tide

It’s often said that a rising tide lifts all boats. Nowhere is that more evident than with the Labrador Fishermen’s Union Shrimp Company Limited (LFUSCL), a fisher-owned, community-first seafood company operating along the rugged coast of southern Labrador.

In 1978, the Government of Canada allocated three shrimp licences for all of Labrador. Unionized fishers from L’Anse-au-Clair to Cartwright applied as a cooperative for the two licences intended for the southern region. The fishers wanted to create sustainable employment opportunities for the long-struggling area, and the Labrador Shrimp Company — as it’s known locally — was born. Since then, from its head office in L’Anse-au-Loup, the company has provided a lifeline to a smattering of remote coastal communities.

When the company incorporated the following year, the same mandate, policies and founding principles of the original organization were maintained, and many of its bylaws are based on its “fishers first” cooperative principles. Fishers receive fair prices for their harvest and, if needed, loans to upgrade their boats. Locals are hired first – seventy percent of their employees and shareholders are Indigenous – paid a good wage and supported in moving up within the company. Positions are always filled from within, and board members – at least 50 percent of whom are Indigenous – are required to be fish harvesters. Decisions, therefore, are made by the people most affected by them. All profits are reinvested in the company and the fishery infrastructure along the southern Labrador coast.

Gilbert Linstead, the general manager, who started as an operations manager in 1989, explains. “‘Fishers first’ means we look at two things: what we pay fishermen for their harvest, and the facilities we build to make sure they can process the resource. And all funds generated are put back into infrastructure in the communities.”

Over the years, the company has invested millions of dollars in infrastructure, particularly leading-edge processing technology in five remote Labrador communities (four of them Indigenous): Charlottetown, Pinsent’s Arm, L’Anse-au-Loup, Cartwright and Mary’s Harbour. This has allowed fishers to process their own harvests and create quality products, instead of shipping them elsewhere for processing.

Phil Quinlan of the accounting firm Quinlan Boland Barrett has acted as a financial and business consultant for the company since 1989. He believes the development of the fishery, including the upgrading of its infrastructure, has had the most impact in the area.

“The fishery in southern Labrador was decades behind the rest of the province when the company was incorporated. Fishing vessels were smaller and not well equipped. There were very few plants and they had very little, if any, modern equipment. Today, the company has some of the most modern and efficient fish processing plants in Newfoundland and Labrador. The inshore vessels now compare with the vessels on the Island, and harvesting has been boosted by their investment in mid-shore and offshore fishing vessels.”

The “fishers first” policy put more money in the fishers’ pockets and created sustainable, skilled, local jobs, making the Labrador Shrimp Company a key employer in the area. This policy literally changed lives, revitalized communities, and gave fishers a say in both the industry and their own future.

“This development in the fishery has improved the wealth and prosperity of the region,” Quinlan adds. “Prior to Labrador Shrimp Company, communities in Southern Labrador were among the poorest outport communities in the province, whereas today they are among the most prosperous.”

Today, the Labrador Shrimp Company is one of the province’s leaders in the production of multiple species of North Atlantic groundfish, shellfish and pelagics such as herring. With customers spanning the globe, annual sales are over $90 million. The company has 600 fish harvesters and approximately 500 employees, mostly seasonal workers — 72 percent of whom are Indigenous.

The journey has not been without challenges. But when problems arise, the Labrador Shrimp Company creates solutions. In 1984, when the L’Anse-au-Loup bank closed and the community wanted to start a credit union, the company made it happen through a start-up investment. In the ’90s, with the collapse of the cod fishery, the company quickly adapted, softening the economic hit to the area — which actually thrived while most of the province did not.

“We weathered that storm by being innovative,” Linstead explains. “We also put more emphasis on our local species outside of cod.”

Lately, the Labrador Shrimp Company has been facing another challenge: an aging demographic. But, once again, the company is looking to technology, installing innovative automated processes to make up for the shortfall in workers.

Another way the company seeks to advance its position in the industry is by investing in environmentally responsible and sustainable harvesting practices. This includes using fuel-efficient motors, heat-recovery systems, environmentally friendly waste treatment, electric winches (to limit potential oil leaks from hydraulic ones), and Freon-free freezing systems in its vessels.

And in 2012, the company purchased fifty percent of MV Osprey Limited. Five years later, MV Osprey initiated a modernization process and built a “green ship.” The MV Northern Osprey III is Canada’s largest fishing vessel, with a cargo capacity of 850 metric tons. Designed for harsh ice conditions, this full-service, offshore vessel harvests and processes cold-water shrimp along the Labrador coast to southern Baffin Island.

The Northern Osprey III employs 60 rotational crew who harvest, process, cook, package, freeze, and even palletize up to 90 tonnes of shrimp a day onboard, within hours of it being caught. And it’s accomplished in an environmentally responsible manner and leaves no waste behind.

Jeff Simms, CEO of MV Osprey agrees. “Our goal is to reduce cost on fuel and lessen our carbon footprint. Through modern technology we can do this in several ways on the Northern Osprey III. We can optimize the engines injection and exhaust systems to reduce emissions, regenerate power from larger electrical systems to support smaller ones, and utilize heat recovery from engines to support domestic heating.

The Labrador Shrimp Company was recently given the 2022 Industry Leadership and Excellence Award at the 5^th annual Turning the Tide marine industry awards ceremony. It was recognized not only for strides made in environmental protection but also for its leadership, innovation and impact within the industry as well as on its employees and their communities.

In addition to providing scholarships and sponsorships, the company’s presence in Southern Labrador for over four decades has created economic spinoffs in the hospitality, transportation, construction, retail and marine sectors. Communities once heavily reliant on employment insurance have been renewed.

“Most people would say without [the company], the communities would not exist as we know them,” Linstead says. “All of our people would be gone to other parts of our nation and the world.”

According to Linstead, putting people over profits has never hindered the company. Instead it, and its members, have flourished. By reinvesting profits, incomes are higher in the area than the provincial average.

Quinlan agrees. “Before the LFUSCL was formed, the fishers in Southern Labrador received less for their fish than fishers on the Island. Today fishers are paid equal to, or greater than, fishers on the Island. Without the LFUSCL, the Labrador fishery would be much smaller than it is today and the benefits would not be accruing to the adjacent communities and people.

“This company has been innovative since the beginning, finding ways to succeed where other companies failed. It has been successful because the fisher-shareholders believed the best way to obtain success was for the whole region to be successful. This was never about one person or one family becoming wealthy, but about sustainable development, which would provide good living conditions for the people in the communities and create an optimistic future for them. And management has always focused on sustainable development, every operation had to contribute to the company.”

Sounds like the Labrador Shrimp Company is Southern Labrador’s rising tide.

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2023-06-20

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Labrador Shrimp Company

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