Royal Star Foods adapts to industry turmoil through education

Below is an excerpt from “Co-operative Effort,” an article about Royal Star Foods’ essential-skills education initiative that appears in the second issue of Canadian CEO. If you would like to receive a copy of the full article for reprint in a newspaper or newsletter, please contact ABC CANADA by e-mail at info@abc-canada.org.

Eugene Bernard, CEO Royal Star Foods

In the Maritimes, business co-operatives are a way of life. “We’re a co-op community,” says Eugene Bernard, CEO of Royal Star Foods Ltd., a seafood-processing plant near the village of Tignish, P.E.I. “Everything you see here is co-op. We have co-op stores, a co-op medical centre, a co-op funeral parlor. You name it, there’s a co-op name on it. People helping people.”

Royal Star Foods is no exception. The company, owned by 175 fishers, also employs about 260 people in the plant, making it by far the largest single employer in Tignish and the surrounding area (population 1,800). A seasonal business that operates eight-10 months of the year, Royal Star is the biggest processor of lobster in P.E.I., as well as handling snow crab, rock crab, dog fish, scallops, mackerel, herring, mussels and ground fish for markets in Canada, Europe, Japan and the United States.

The company attracted the attention of Workplace Education P.E.I., a government-funded initiative, in the mid-1990s when it took a progressive and risky stance in the face of dwindling fish stocks. While many fisheries were downsizing and closing through the Atlantic Groundfish Strategy, Royal Star — then known as Tignish Fisheries — went in the opposite direction, embarking on a restructuring, expansion and modernization of its fish-processing plant. The idea behind the new operation, which took the name Royal Star Foods, was to give the co-operative a competitive edge through increased efficiency.