Business View Magazine | September 2019

157 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 2019 BADGER BAY MUSSEL FARMS , LTD . socks, and harvesting, quicker, and results in a much higher volume. The company currently operates three facilities in Newfoundland: Badger Bay Mussels Farms, Inc. (the marketing arm) employs 11 people; the sister company, Notre Dame Bay Mussel Farms, Inc. (10 people); and Mirachin Oyster Farms, Inc. (5 people); along with two biologists stationed at the Ocean Sciences Centre in St. John’s. Product is sold under two brands – Iceberg Select and Badger Bay Blues – to Newfoundland, Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. Roberts admits, “We’ve been doing this a long time and we’ve had our struggles but you can’t stop. And you’ve got to diversify. My wife, Sherrie, and I started this business together, and I don’t give her enough credit. We had no hydraulics from 1988 to 1995 – just brute force labor. But we learned a lot. This is a tough racket. It’s not for the faint of heart. These days, with storms and high winds, we’re always losing seed. But our quality is still the same. And everywhere we go, we find people that has had our mussels that like the quality of them, the size, and they like the meat.” Looking ahead, Roberts acknowledges, “The smaller people are fading away and there’s a lot more consolidation. It’s so competitive and expensive now, and the regulations are so drastic. When I started at 22, I was the youngest in this land at mussels. That thirty years has gone fast. Overall, I would like to see that we can do our seven to ten million pounds of mussels, it should be pretty easy to achieve. And I’d like to do two or three million oysters, that’s what I’d like to get on the go. Our competition isn’t really next door. It’s around the world. We’re affiliated with other companies who are also marketing mussels. At the end of the day, the market has grown and people are eating more shellfish, more seafood. It’s a fairly cheap commodity. And mussels are good for you to eat every day. “I think we should be pushing the healthy part of it more because you can’t find a healthy source