I'll try to address that, Mr. Byrne.
I was in Europe at ANUGA, at the big international fish show in the late 1980s when I was really starting to get involved with this business. I was also directing Collins Seafood, which at the time was the only pound retail-wholesale operation. Catches were considerably lower than they are now. It was about this time of year when I was at that big show in Europe with another colleague representing a couple of other firms.
I had said to some of the local fishermen at the time, “Look, you guys come up with some lobster for Mother's Day and we'll give you an extra 50¢ a pound over whatever is being offered.” The guys who had their gear out said, “Oh, boy, that's great, 50¢ a pound is 50¢ a pound. We probably won't catch much.” I said, “Don't worry about it. We only want a thousand pounds for the local people coming in.” That was great.
I was over in Europe, and in those days transcontinental phone calls weren't in their infancy, but there were a lot fewer of them than now. I was called to the phone, and it was a gentleman from Paturel, who tore a strip off me from one end to the other. Who did I think I was bucking the shore price by offering 50¢ more? He wasn't satisfied that it was for a few thousand pounds, or maybe a little more, for a Mother's Day weekend.
I learned a real lesson that day: there are some people who are the movers and the shakers, and then there are the rest of us. Unfortunately, or not, I wasn't forced out of business. I didn't have to eat that and do this, and life went on. But it was a real lesson in economics at that time and in the ensuing years about who really controls the business and who really makes the money.
I wasn't kidding a few minutes ago when I said there are opportunities here--for a nickel, for a dime--to make a lot of money really quickly because of the fluidity of the product we're dealing with, the lobster. So whether it's a big company or a small individual, there are two different issues. A few years ago there were a lot more people involved. We were shipping lobsters out of Alma to Europe. We would ship so many thousand pounds a week to a couple of clients we'd dug up in Europe. But regulations, economics, transportation, and so forth make it very difficult for the individual small-time shipper. It can still be done, but that has become less and less of the operation of the business.
We designed some boxes at that time with our own logo on them, and we were contracting for some of the canneries to sell whole, cooked, frozen lobsters particularly to Europe, although we were involved with Japan at the same time. It was a tremendous product. There were a number of people. If you wouldn't buy my lobster, then you would. You would always try to balance two or three against the middle.
It's our strong impression that over the last few years, like every other commodity-based business, control of that industry has become more and more centralized. Lobster has become king in more ways than one. The industry sells 110 million pounds of lobster a year, and from 1999 to 2007 I think it averaged out at $6.10 a pound. Some years it was a bit more, but it was under $6 for only one year.
In the ensuing time, the buying, marketing, and handling have become concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and there are fewer alternatives in selling the product. In other words, whether the product is fished in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, or Nova Scotia, the product tends to be funneled through a very few major buyers. The likelihood of a smaller outfit dealing directly with somebody in the United States has decreased significantly due to economics, regulations, and a number of other things, the same as in Europe.
I'm not sure that $250 million was lost to this industry, but I know that some significant money was made on that kind of volume. If you and I and another friend can control 60% to 80% of that, we tend to set the tone for the rest of the industry.
A few years ago, the only money being made in the fishery from a lot of buyers was the 20% difference in the value of the dollar. People didn't really make a lot on the lobster; they made it on the exchange. They flipped the exchange rate up with the product, and considerable money was made on the exchange. That's being dealt with.
If you can control it, as I think it's becoming increasingly controlled and centralized, you can really set the price, and you have the opportunity to make some money there.