Norway-based Grieg Seafood announced the launch of Ocean Quality North America, which will assume exclusive responsibility for all sales and marketing of Grieg Seafood British Columbia’s farmed seafood products in North America.
According to Dave Mergle, manager of the new sales organization, the move follows Grieg Seafood in Europe's launch of Ocean Quality for selling and marketing Grieg Seafood's fish a few years ago.
“That model has gone very well so recently the decision was made that this is how it should work everywhere so it’s being implemented here in North America,” Mergle told SeafoodSource. “What they found was that it’s given [Grieg] a lot more proximity to the market and allowed them to get closer to the customers.
“Grieg Seafood farms in British Columbia predominantly serve the North American market. Since its inception, they’ve used a third party broker, Calkins and burke, for sales and marketing and focused mostly on producing their fish. We’ve had a great relationship [with our broker] done a nice job for us but we think it hasn’t really allowed us to get close to marketplace. We want to bring transparency to the entire chain and deliver more value by being integrated. It will also allow us to start giving our customers more option across our entire portfolio including fish from Scotland and Norway and accessing the power of the whole Grieg Network.”
The company is initially looking to hire at least eight employees.
“In early 2015 we will stop using our broker and take responsibility for selling and marketing all of our fish. We’re trying to recruit good, experienced seafood sales people. We’re keen on getting the best people available with a good track record in the seafood business,” Mergle said.
