SWOT Analysis -3

Issue:

Geoff_Irvine_Issue: What is an important issue that your company is currently facing? Hi. I am Geoff Irvine and I am the Executive Director of the Lobster Council of Canada and the issue that we have today is how to fund this council for the long term.

Cause:

Geoff_Irvine_Cause: What caused this issue to arise and why is it important? The challenge we have is when we set up the funding for the Lobster Council in the beginning the five Eastern Provinces and DFO agreed to fund us with seed money. They expected us to get going for 2 or 3 years. They gave us an extra year. They expected the industry to buy into the council, to realize the importance of the council and to find a way to fund it.

Background:

Geoff_Irvine_Q1: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and your career path to date? Hi my name is Geoff Irvine and I am the executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada. My career has been mostly in the seafood business. I started in 1991 working for Clearwater. I worked on the road selling all their major types of seafood for several years. Then I went to work for the Canadian offshore shrimp business where I did a lot of interesting work doing seafood inspections, selling shrimp, trading seafood from the Russians and bringing it into Canada, working with Iceland and Norway. In 1998 I started my own company Harbour View Seafoods Limited with a Danish company as my partner. I imported and exported fish for 8 years. When I turned 40 I completely changed course and came to work here at Acadia University as the Director of Alumni Affairs. I did that for four years and then it was time for me to go back to Halifax. So I took the job as Executive Director of the Lobster Council, which was a brand new startup industry association. Geoff_Irvine_Q2: Can you describe a typical workday for yourself? I am a fairly typical 9 to-5 kind of guy. I usually get in to the office around 8 o'clock in the morning and I try to leave by 5 o'clock everyday. I have three kids. I like to keep the work-life balance in order. I work a lot on the weekends and I travel. I travel at least half of every week. That is always how I have been working so my life involves a lot of time management in terms of traveling and being away. Geoff_Irvine_Q3: Can you describe your role in the organization? The Executive Director in this company is the only staff person. I was the founding staff person and I am still the only staff person. In our respect we have a board of directors comprise of 22 people from the lobster industry. We have a council, which is an overarching advising council of 35 people, and we have an executive of 5 people. A lot of what I do is coordinate committees, coordinate the different boards and what they are doing. I am the guy that does everything. I liaise with all the provinces. I liaise with the federal government. I work with all the different harvester groups and all the different issues we have to face. Geoff_Irvine_Q4: Can you describe your leadership style? I am a 'lead from the front' kind of guy and I always have been. I try to give people lots of rope to do their own projects and lead and guide them. I can tend to poke my nose in things more than I should but it is only because I am interested and want to help. Geoff_Irvine_Q5: What does good performance mean for you in your position? I know I am doing a good job when all of our stakeholders are engaged and happy and providing good input, and good feedback and feeling that we are making some difference. One of the biggest challenges we have in the lobster industry is a real issue of trust and transparency in the business. The harvesting sector has traditionally, for many reasons, been skeptical of the selling side of the business - the processors and the live shippers. A lot of what I do on any given day is try and bring people together, try to get people to understand each other and try to get people to cooperate. When I see a relationship being formed between a harvester and a live shipping company that expands past the board of directors meeting, that is a successful day. Geoff_Irvine_Q6: What does your organization do and how is it different? Our organization is attempting to bring some order to the very chaotic lobster industry. And when I say bring order, we are trying to get people working together and elevate Canadian lobster to where it should be. It is an exotic luxury item. It has become a bit of a commodity over the past years. We have had excessive amounts of supply. We have seen a Canadian dollar come up past par. This has presented many challenges and we are seeing the luxury segment dwindle through all of our markets so we are trying to promote Canadian lobster. We are coming up with an extensive marketing and promotion campaign but we are also working on the internal issues of the lobster business such as how people work together, how the shore prices are set, how the product is rated for quality at the shore. Those marketability issues are very much linked to the marketing issues because you cannot go out and promise to have great quality of a product if you cannot back it up and the three main things in the lobster business that we cannot back up are consistently are quality, supply and price. They are all over the place. We want to be able to go out with a consistent price, consistent quantity and a consistent quality at all times. How is that different? It is the first time in Canada that we have put all of these people around a table together. It is the first time we have had harvesters at the table with live shippers and processors as well as the provinces and the Feds. They are all working together towards the same goal and it is really groundbreaking. Geoff_Irvine_Q7: How is your company structured or organized? The organization is a full council of about 35 people. There is a board of directors of 22 people. There is an executive of 5 people and there is me as the staff person. We are a non-profit corporation. Geoff_Irvine_Q8: Can you describe any key events that occurred either in your life or that of the organization that were crucial to success over time? One of the things that has really helped me in this position was my time spent working at Acadia. I went to Acadia to work as the Executive Director of the Associated alumni and the Associate Alumni has a Board of Directors. So I got to learn about governance and I got to learn about engaging stakeholders. I got to learn about committees and how everyone works together and how you have to really juggle a lot of balls to keep the thing moving forward and for me that was really a key thing to my education because before that I was just a seller of fish. I was very good at combing the world for products, finding customers for them, shipping them, getting paid. Hopefully making money at the end of the day. I did not have that governance expertise and working at Acadia was a key part of that. Geoff_Irvine_Q9: How does your organization make money? We are funded at the moment by the 5 Eastern provinces, Quebec and East, through the federal government and through the department of fisheries and oceans. What we have been focusing on is developing a membership news program, but even past that we want to bring in a levy for every pound of lobster landed in Canada. We are doing stakeholder engagement at the moment trying to get the government to buy into it, and we feel that if we can pull a penny a pound somewhere through the value chain of every pound of lobster, last year we landed 125 million pounds of lobster in Canada. We figure that will raise us about a million dollars and we will use that for a marketing campaign. We use it to work on the structure issues and the marketability issues. But it is a struggle because it is an industry that is not used to funding things like this. It is an industry that is very individualistic. Harvesters are very individualistic. The companies are and they are out there competing with each other. Getting everybody to work together is not easy. Geoff_Irvine_Q10: Who are the customers of your company and why they buy its products or services? Our stakeholders are the companies that are involved with the lobster industry. We have 10,000 lobster license holders in Canada. You have got 400-500 shipping companies and processors, trucking, dealers, shore buyers. You have got first nation communities. The really fascinating fact of the lobster business is that it impacts more small communities in Eastern Canada than any other industry, fishery or any other business. Our direct stakeholders are those involved with the business, but indirectly it is hundreds and thousands of families in the rural parts of Canada. Geoff_Irvine_Q11: Can you describe the industry within which your company operates and how it is changing? Need transcript Geoff_Irvine_Q12: How do firms compete within this industry? Typically people compete in this business through price. It is a classic price driven business. If your selling live lobsters, you can set up at a packing facility in a community and put lobsters on a truck and send it to the airport and ship it to Europe and you can compete fairly quickly with one of the bigger companies. The challenge we have got is that does not really help anybody. We have a luxury product. We have a unique product. We should not be undercutting each other. We should not be selling on price but it happens time in and time out. The companies who are really making a name for themselves are those that are selling on quality and who are offering a consistent quality all through the year. To me that is what we want to aim for, but typically you buy in the business based on lowest price. Geoff_Irvine_Q13: What is the role of regulators or government in this industry? Very extensive. The federal government regulates the fishing side of the business through the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They issue the licenses to fishermen and they give them the license conditions every year and every season. The provincial government regulates the processing and the live shipping part of the business. The federal government regulates the coast guard who are the folks who help out on the water. Agriculture Canada is the federal body that supports international marketing so it is a business where we work extensively with all the different levels of government. Geoff_Irvine_Q14: What big issues will companies in your industry be addressing in the next five years? There are lots of issues occurring out there. Sustainability. Eco-Certification. There is a big push to certify that the fishery is sustainable with a third party. They are working on some projects like traceability and food safety. Consumers now all around the world are wanting to know where their food comes from and if there is a sickness or a death, you need to know exactly where that product came from. We are working on some traceability programs right now, some very exciting ones. One interesting one that the harvesters have really bought into is a tagging program called "this fish". Some fishermen put tags on their products, so when a consumer is eating a lobster in San Francisco and it has a tag on it, he can go home and look up that number and find out where the fishermen came from, what his boat is called and who is on the back of the stern of the boat with him. It is a fascinating bit of traction for the marketing program. We have got a bit of a challenge right now in Germany. Some of the animal group rights are concerned about lobster husbandry. Lobsters are being improperly treated Geoff_Irvine_Q15: Can you offer some fast facts about your company? In terms of the lobster industry in Canada, in 2010 we landed 125 million pounds which was a record. We have seen the landings increase dramatically over the last 5 years dramatically. Nova Scotia lands around half of the lobster in Canada. Followed by PEI, New Brunswick, Quebec and Newfoundland. All 5 provinces are very involved with lobster in different ways. There are 10,000 roughly lobster licenses in Canada. There would be hundreds of companies involved in the business from live shipping and processing. We sell lobster to about 60 countries in the world. The US is our biggest customer. They take about 75% of our product although some are train shipped through Logan and through JFK to other countries. Followed by the EU and the Far East. The biggest expanding markets would be China. China is a huge opportunity for us. The Middle East is becoming a nice market . Korea, Domestic Canada there's potential and there is still potential in niche markets in the United States. Geoff_Irvine_Q16: Can you comment on the prominence of Yarmouth County for the Canadian Lobster Industry? The biggest lobster fishing place in Canada is LFA 34 which goes from Digby pretty much to Cape Island and Shelburne County but Yarmouth is in the middle of that area and it is probably where the biggest landings are in the country. LFA 34 is blessed with a season that is 6 months long. They have massive landings in November and December to supply the Christmas market and then they have large landings in the spring as well. But Yarmouth would be epicenter of lobster in Canada.

Company: Lobster Council of Canada Size: Small Industry: Sea Food Business Activity: Professional, scientific and technical activities Type of Entity: Private Company Number of Employees: Fewer than 25 Country: Canada Headquarters: Halifax, Canada Yearly Revenue: Less than $1 million Gender: Male Subject: Management Keywords: