Edward Wood Jr. may not be one of the most popular businessmen in the quaint Florida Panhandle fishing village of Port St. Joe. But he's certainly one of the most innovative and unique. Wood's company, Wood's Fisheries, a fifth-generation business, processes both wild and farmed shrimp, the latter originating from its 300-acre farm. Raising shrimp allows Wood to run his plant year-round, fill in his supply gaps and meet his retail and foodservice customers' demands.
Wood's family has fished the Gulf for well over a century. His grandfather, M.C., began shrimping in the late '50s, and his father, Edward Sr., expanded the business, owning as many as a dozen vessels and opening a processing plant in the early '70s.
When Edward Jr. joined the company in the mid-'90s, times weren't so promising'' the Gulf shrimp fleet was shrinking due to the influx of cheap farmed shrimp imports and skyrocketing diesel fuel prices, among other factors. But the company's 30,000-square-foot processing plant, equipped with a state-of-the-art IQF freezer, needed more shrimp than local fisherman could harvest to remain open year-round and be profitable.
So in 2002 Wood and his brother-in-law, Mark Godwin, purchased an abandoned catfish farm 20 miles inland from Port St. Joe and converted it into a shrimp farm. The farm yielded its first crop of vannamei shrimp, the same species raised in Latin America and Asia, in 2005 and produced about 100,000 pounds last year. (Comparatively, the company processes about 4 million pounds of Gulf shrimp annually.)
Wood's Fisheries now supplies retailers and foodservice operators along the Gulf Coast and Eastern seaboard, through Sea Jem Imports in Boston, with both certified Wild American Shrimp (the company was one of the first to become certified) and farmed vannamei, which commands about $1.30 a pound more than imported vannamei.
''The biggest part of our success will be that we always have product,that we're never out,'' says Wood. ''There's a lot of room for growth. But the growth will be through marketing. Marketing is our future. We need to do something. The [Gulf shrimp] industry is in trouble.''
However, some local fishermen aren't exactly embracing Wood's shrimp-farming venture. One shrimper, who Wood has known since childhood, won't even look him in the eye.
''They don't like it,'' he bluntly says. ''They think I'm the enemy.''
But they don't see the big picture and realize that center-of-plate proteins like chicken and beef, not farmed shrimp, are the real opposition. But Wood does, and local fishermen's discontent won't stop the entrepreneur from continuing to grow his successful business.
Best regards,
Steven Hedlund
Associate Editor
SeaFood Business
