In the wake of famed Rockland world-champion canner Rita Willey’s golden sardine era, Maine’s shuttered canneries have taken far-divergent directions since the halcyon days of the state’s packing pinnacle.
On the one hand is the former Stinson Seafood sardine-canning operation in Prospect Harbor, which is being developed as a cold-storage warehouse for Wyman blueberries.
Stinson’s was the last sardine cannery in the U.S. when it closed in 2010, marking the end of the industry that was once a major economic force in Maine, employing thousands.
But declining herring catches and reduced consumer demand marked the nadir of the once-prosperous canning industry that got Willey’s tail-and-head-scissor-snipping skills featured on Johnny Carson’s TV show.
Fast-forward 50 years.
Having fallen from economic grace, Maine’s once-thriving canneries are trying against all odds to reinvent themselves.
Milbridge-based Wyman’s company plans to rent 18,000 square feet of the former Stinson cannery for use as frozen storage for blueberries and other fruits that it processes for the retail market, according to the Bangor Daily News.
If Prospect Harbor is a model for successful redevelopment, then there’s the former Wass sardine cannery in Eastport, which under Republican Gov. Paul LePage was to be redeveloped in the mid-2000s into a seafood-processing operation by Campobello Holdings.
Yet, as The Maine Wire reported in 2024, things later went awry as the facility devolved into an illicit marijuana-trafficking operation with ties to Hong Kong.
Wass, once a thriving cannery, later a seafood freezer, closed in 1961.
Suffice to say, trying to reimagine a dying industry as a sustainable jobs-producing venture takes imagination of the highest order.
Despite the state’s continuing, decades-long loss of foundational jobs such as sardine canning and paper-making, “Maine lacks a long-term plan to protect and grow these industries,” according to the Alliance for Maine.
In the last 15 years, the Pine Tree State has lost more than 20,000 of these jobs, shrinking from 44% to just 14% of the job market.
Since the 2008 recession, Maine’s economy has been the slowest-growing in the nation, with projected job growth of less than 1%, compared to the national average of 6%, the alliance, a 501(c)(4) non-profit based in Readfield, said.
