A Down East waterfront facility long known for processing seafood is about to get a new tenant, but this time it will house fruit instead of fish.
Wyman’s, known for its Maine-grown blueberries, has signed a lease to use part of the former Stinson Seafood sardine cannery in the Gouldsboro village of Prospect Harbor. The Milbridge-based company plans to rent 18,000 square feet of the former cannery for use as frozen storage for blueberries and other fruits that it processes for the retail market.
Kevin Barbee, who co-owns the former cannery with Tim Ring, said he is having freezer rooms built and equipment installed in a warehouse on the southern end of the sprawling building. The lease is expected to go into effect after Aug. 1, according to a copy of the agreement filed at the Hancock County Registry of Deeds, and Barbee said he is hoping the company will start operations there in the fall.
“We’ve sat on it for two years, trying to figure out what to do with it,” Barbee said of the 100,000-square-foot former sardine cannery, which most recently served as a lobster processing plant in early 2021.
Wyman’s, a family-owned business founded in Milbridge in 1874, has expanded in recent years due to increased demand, adding millions of wild blueberries to its offerings. The company has said it is the top-selling frozen fruit brand in the country, and also offers raspberries, strawberries and other fruits.
A spokesperson for Wyman’s said Wednesday in a brief statement that the new freezer space in Gouldsboro will allow the company to store up to 5 million pounds of frozen fruit.
“The Prospect Harbor location is very favorable given our current facilities and will help us store the wild blueberries that we harvest each year,” said Colleen Craig, Wyman’s marketing director.
Barbee said the company approached him and Ring because there is a shortage of commercial freezer space in Maine. Wyman’s currently leases freezer space in Massachusetts and New York, and has to truck those frozen products back and forth to Maine for processing, he said.
Expanding its freezer capacity in Maine will help cut down on transportation costs and production times, he said.
Barbee and Ring bought the former cannery at auction two years ago after American Aquafarms purchased it with the intent of processing salmon there. That company planned to grow salmon at a large floating salmon farm it proposed to establish in Frenchman Bay, but later abandoned those plans after running into stiff opposition from several surrounding communities.
The building was originally constructed more than 100 years ago as a sardine cannery and has been expanded and modified repeatedly over the years. After Bumble Bee Foods shut the facility down in 2010, when it was the last operating sardine cannery in the U.S., it was revived as a lobster processing plant, first by Live Lobster and then by Maine Fair Trade Lobster.
Barbee said Wyman’s will not be the first tenant at the property. A local lobster buyer, called the Lobster Trap, started business last year at the cannery’s former pier, he said.
“They are starting year two now,” he said.
The building owners are looking for another tenant to occupy the part of the facility formerly used in the past decade for lobster processing, Barbee said. That part still contains a large lobster tank that, with a capacity of 250,000 pounds, is considered the second-largest lobster tank in the state of Maine, he said.