New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture said it will begin preliminary work at a Machiasport salmon processing plant this fall to reopen it early in 2009, according to The Quoddy Tides of Eastport. The company plans to hire 80 workers once the plant is in full production.
Previously, the plant had been owned by Atlantic Salmon of Maine, which Cooke acquired in 2004. Cooke closed the plant within a few months because fish volumes were too low, according to Nell Halse, vice president of communications for Cooke.
Halse told Mainebiz it was always the company’s intention to reopen a processing plant in Maine once it had built up enough inventory. The company plans to stock its Maine farms with three million salmon a year to support the plant — ten times the previous stocks level.