Firm to invest $60M in state salmon farms

US - A Canadian company announced Tuesday it will invest $60 million in stocking salmon in Maine waters over the next 18 months, creating jobs for the aquaculture industry, which has floundered over the past few years.

Gov. John Baldacci was at the Washington County Community College's Marine Trades Center on Tuesday, where Cooke Aquaculture of St. George and Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, made the announcement. The company's local operation is at Estes Head in Eastport. It owns several aquaculture facilities in Maine.

"And next year we plan on increasing that with more fish and hopefully a [processing] plant," Cooke's Aquaculture chief executive officer Glenn Cooke said Tuesday. Cooke is the co-founder of the Canadian company, which was founded 20 years ago.

Cooke did not speculate on how much it would cost to reopen a processing plant in Washington County. "We still are trying to figure out exactly what building and where these fish will be processed. We also have a plant in Machiasport as well as Eastport.

You're talking a few million dollars of total investment to get that where it needs to be," he said after the luncheon.

Source: Bangor Daily News