North American distributor East Coast Seafood Group has selected Greg Staley to assume the role of vice president of operations, a new, “highly focused” position created to aid the company’s strategic push into the consumer value-added market.
As VP of operations, Staley will work to manage the labor force, raw materials handling, and manufacturing practices across a dozen facilities along the North American coast.
Staley comes to the role with 20 years of experience in lead management roles for a variety of food suppliers and distributors, including Nestle USA and Boars Head. Most recently, Staley served as the senior vice president at Vermont Smoke and Cure, a position that saw him bringing clean label consumer meat products to major retailers all around the United States.
East Coast is looking to leverage Staley’s expertise as it ventures further into value-added seafood territory.
“In various management capacities, Greg has helped drive increases in key operational metrics such as margins, yield, productivity and overall efficiencies of scale,” the company said. “East Coast Seafood Group will utilize Staley’s expertise in a role of similar responsibilities, leading the operations team through the anticipated development of value add seafood.”
“Our teams across the Northeast into Atlantic Canada are deeply committed to operational excellence and Greg’s addition is a perfect complement to our strategic journey towards the plates of American consumers,” East Cost Seafood CEO and President Chris Maze said. “Our facilities, second to our people, play a critical role in our plans, and remain at the very heart of what we do. We are collectively poised to leverage our position as seafood leaders and I could not be more pleased this significant addition to our talented leadership team.”
Staley is eager to begin his duties with East Coast, and looks forward to developing talent from within the company’s teams.
“I’m delighted to be joining the East Coast Seafood Group family and am looking forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting to work,” Staley said. “One of my passions is in working with and developing talent within teams. We strive and build focused group of individuals that are engaged and empowered and know how to execute the plan – and understand, not one of us is as great as all of us.”
Based out of Massachusetts, East Coast Seafood Group is one of the largest distributors of live and frozen North American lobster, and a major distributor of scallops and fish. After 35 years of growth in the United States and Canada, the company recently announced a retail diversification plan, funded in part with financial investments by Forum Capital.
