Sea Hag Seafood founder snags $40,000 award
The founder of St. George lobster processor Sea Hag Seafood is among five winners of the 2013 Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneurs award, which comes with a $40,000 grant.
The award by the Hitachi Foundation, given to 24-year-old Kyle Murdock, president and CEO of Sea Hag, also opens up access to the foundation’s peer advisory network and its investors’ circle, according to the Portland Press Herald.
Murdock dropped out of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts last year, and returned home to Maine to start his business. Part of a family of lobstermen, he noticed Maine lobsters were being shipped for processing to Canada and lobstermen were getting less money.
To help turn the tide, last fall he bought the former Great Eastern Mussel Farms property and launched his processing plant in it. He spent $805,000 to buy the property and renovate the facility, and pulled in money from private investors, a bank loan and Community Development Block Grant funds. He also received a grant from Efficiency Maine to install energy-efficient equipment and got tax credits through the state’s Seed Capital Tax Credit program.
The Bangor Daily News reported the company currently has 25 to 30 full-time employees and hopes to reach annual revenues of nearly $25 million in the next two years.
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