The Kingfish Company has secured a win in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, exhausting opponents' options in the Maine court system after a multi-year battle over its proposal to build a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) farm in Jonesport, Maine.
The Kingfish Company has been fighting to build a RAS facility in Jonesport, Maine for over half a decade. The company, at the time called Kingfish Zeeland, first announced its intention to build a RAS project in November 2019 to raise yellowtail.
Since that time the company has changed its name to The Kingfish Company, harvested some of its first U.S.-grown yellowtail, and intensified its sales efforts as the company nears a break-even EBITDA thanks to its operations in Kats, Netherlands.
Throughout that time, however, it has been unable to proceed with its Maine-based project – originally intended to be launched by 2021 – due to a number of court battles launched by opponents of the project.
The company received its final state level permits in November 2021, and at the time said it had already received everything it needed to prepare its site for production. It later secured a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit in July 2022.
However, some residents in Jonesport staunchly opposed the project. Residents in the town circulated a petition to enact a moratorium prohibiting all aquaculture development in the town – a move that the town soundly rejected in July 2022...
