Here’s how Dean Fleck heard the news.
The general manager for the Newport branch of Englund Marine and Industrial Supply was in his office when a skipper who does business with Bornstein Seafood showed up in a panic and asked, “Have you heard?”
“And I said, ‘Well, no, what am I hearing?’ So that’s when I found out about it.”
The news last week that West Coast seafood processor Bornstein Seafoods would close its facilities in Newport, Ore., and Bellingham, Wash., and consolidate operations at an existing plant in Astoria, left many in those fishing communities uncertain about what it will mean for them.
The processor expects its workforce will grow in Astoria, but Vice President Andrew Bornstein told KMUN there are no hard numbers yet and he acknowledged that finding housing could be a challenge for incoming workers.
In Newport, where Bornstein plans to close a small seafood buying and processing plant in May and lay off 50 year-round employees, the news was especially jarring.
Fleck says his store will be conservative in how it stocks shelves for now – ordering less boots and other gear, for example – knowing there won’t be as many plant workers around looking to buy.
As far as the wider community goes, there’s one thing Fleck knows for sure: “It’s going to affect us deeply.”
‘Nothing else we can do’
There are the people losing their jobs at the Newport plant. They have been offered positions at the Astoria plant and now must weigh the pros and cons of re-location.
Pablo Bermudez, the general manager of the Newport facility, plans to relocate, but he knows it could be difficult for some people to uproot their lives or move their families.
“It’s hard on us,” he said. “Nothing else we can do.”
There are the fishermen based in Newport who sell to Bornstein and who may need to rethink operations. There are the ice sellers who supply those fishermen. There are the tradespeople who keep boats in working order.
There is the city itself: Bornstein is a major water customer. And, the city has an interest in what happens next to Bornstein’s processing facility on Bay Boulevard, Newport’s busy waterfront street where tourism and the commercial fishing industry jostle for space.
Until 2017, the city owned Bornstein’s building. When city leaders considered a purchase and sales agreement with Bornstein, they said it was in Newport’s interest to sell. Bornstein had been leasing the facility since 2011. The processor was poised to make major investments in the property and the city didn’t have funds allocated to maintain the industrial facility.
But the sales agreement the Newport City Council ultimately approved included two important elements: a first right of refusal if Bornstein looked to sell the property, and the right to buy the property back from the processor at a discount if the facility remained empty for 24 months.
“We want to ensure there are some options and some competition for processing seafood in Newport, and that was one of the reasons those provisions were included in the sale agreement,” said Spencer Nebel, Newport’s city manager.
Now, Bornstein’s departure also means the city has only one major processor remaining: the West Coast processing giant Pacific Seafood.
While there are other buyers on a smaller scale in the area, Pacific Seafood controls significant real estate along Bay Boulevard.
“Pacific Seafood has been a good community partner, but there’s always the concern when all your eggs are in one basket,” Nebel said. “And I think having some healthy competition is usually a good formula for such an important economic factor that fishing and processing are here in the city of Newport.”
Like Bornstein, Pacific is also a significant water customer for the city of Newport.
But the company closed its surimi plant on Bay Boulevard last summer and has told the city it doesn’t anticipate being able to open the plant this year.
That, along with Bornstein’s imminent closure, brings an additional layer of difficulty and uncertainty as Newport’s leaders head into the city’s budget process.
“I would say, at this point, we’re still looking for some answers,” Nebel said, “trying to better understand the decisions that Bornstein has made to close two of their facilities, including the one here in Newport.”
‘More and more every year’
CEO Colin Bornstein told industry publications last week that Bornstein’s consolidation is intended to improve operations and take advantage of excess capacity in Astoria.
“We have had excess capacity, and economic conditions are such that maintaining plants that are not fully utilized is not rational,” Vice President Andrew Bornstein told KMUN in an email.
Lori Steele, executive director of West Coast Seafood Processors Association, heard about the impending consolidation from the Bornstein family, right before the news went public. She said it was a surprise.
But also: “The cost of doing business has just become exorbitant — overhead costs associated with housing, labor, maintaining labor, paying labor — and supporting a year-round workforce has just become … more and more every year,” she said.
The coronavirus pandemic brought shifts in consumer demand and changes to markets — and everyone, Steele added, has been dealing with inflation.
Processors with operations in Oregon have also argued that new regulations from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality for treating wastewater are overly restrictive and burdensome.
The West Coast Seafood Processors Association has said that installing the equipment needed to meet new standards could cost companies millions of dollars, and as much as $100,000 per month to run — enough, Steele and others have argued, to force people out of business or out of the area.
Bornstein Seafoods has also stepped back efforts to expand its footprint in recent years. In 2022, the processor took over a lease for a facility on Resurrection Bay in Seward, Alaska. Seward Harbormaster Norm Regis said Bornstein put in a lot of work to upgrade and clean up the facility, but pulled out after about one year.
Earlier this year, a massive fire destroyed a small landing facility Bornstein owns in Ilwaco, Wash.
But Andrew Bornstein told KMUN the closure of the Alaska plant and the fire in Ilwaco do not have any bearing on the decision to consolidate now.
“Every location is viewed independently,” he wrote in an email.
Steele hopes Bornstein Seafoods will see production in Astoria compensate for, or even offset, the closures in Bellingham and Newport.
“I don’t know if that’s going to be the case, but I think that’s everybody’s hope,” she said.
Making choices
Oregon’s commercial shrimp season opened on Monday. For fishermen accustomed to delivering to Bornstein’s Newport plant, the looming closure means a change of plans as they head out to fish.
Mike Lynch has participated in a number of fisheries over the years, but both he and his son are fishing for shrimp this year.
It isn’t daunting for Lynch to think about bringing boats up to Astoria for the season and to land his catch at Bornstein’s facility there. He’s done it before. But Newport was a convenient middle ground and the processor’s move north means the southern coast will, effectively, be closed to him.
“The shrimp were living in California last year and we figured we’d be going there this year,” Lynch said. “And, you know, that’s another 120 miles to get it to Astoria, so it’d be pretty hard to do.”
While fishing off Astoria for a season is not a huge hurdle, Lynch says other aspects of switching north could be trickier.
Astoria and nearby Warrenton do not have the same infrastructure as Newport and local boats have all the slips. If you’re an outside boat, Lynch said it is hard to find a place to tie up when local boats return from fisheries in Alaska.
Still, he added, fuel is cheaper in Astoria and it’s easier to get ice.
For Kurt Cochran, the outlook feels shakier.
He employs around 18 people between his three boats. For the most part, they all live close to where the boats operate. All of their boat maintenance is done in Newport.
“So now we gotta make a choice,” Corchran said. Could they try to sell to Pacific primarily and keep operations close to Newport? “Or do we have to work more out of town and away from our families and stuff?”
Cochran has fished his entire life. To him, Bornstein’s consolidation points to other troubling changes in the industry. He says it is harder to make your way in fishing, harder to gain entry into different fisheries, harder to stay independent.
But change is inherent in natural resource-based industries. Lynch, Cochran and other fishermen say you have to be able to roll with it.
“People wonder who the true gamblers are,” Fleck said. “Is it the people that go to casinos? And I think it’s the fishermen that are the biggest gamblers we have.”
But they’re not alone. Gear suppliers like Englund Marine, the processors and seafood buyers – anyone banking on the industry — are also rolling the dice throughout the year.
“And we need to have our ducks in a row, so to speak, so that when the season is open, (everyone is) ready to go,” Fleck said. “And it’s hard. So, I guess we’re gamblers too.”