April 3, 2018 — The comments last week by the founder of the Mazzetta Company that the seafood processor will resume processing fresh fish at its largely dormant Gloucester Seafood Processing plant caught many by surprise — including city officials.
Tom Mazzetta, the chief executive officer of the Illinois-based seafood conglomerate that bears his family’s name, told a respected fishing website that the Gloucester Seafood Processing plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park will resume operations before the year is out.
“We’ll be processing the finest fish in New England before the end of the year,” Mazzetta was quoted as saying in the Undercurrentnews.com piece.
On Monday morning, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken said the city has not heard a peep from anyone at the Mazzetta Company about re-firing daily operations at Gloucester Seafood Processing which the company unexpectedly — and without explanation — shuttered in December 2016, a little more than a year after it first opened.
“We haven’t heard a word, not from anyone in Illinois or from anyone associated with the plant here,” Romeo Theken said during an event Monday with NOAA Regional Administrator Mike Pentony at the city’s alewife fishway in West Gloucester.
According to the online story posted late last week, Mazzetta declined to expand on the company’s plans beyond his simple statement.
He wouldn’t say if Gloucester Seafood Processing also would be processing lobsters, as it did when it first opened in 2015, or what the size and composition of the new work force will be following the re-opening.
He didn’t reveal whether the property at 21-29 Great Republic Drive, which was listed online for sale last December (with an asking price of $17 million) will be coming off the market. He also refused to shed any light on why Gloucester Seafood Processing was closed in the first place.
Mazzetta did not respond Monday to phone calls from the Gloucester Daily Times seeking clarification and amplification on his comments to the website.
Mazzetta, with the assistance of city and state tax sweeteners, bought the former Good Harbor Fillet property in the industrial park for about $5 million in 2014 from High Liner Foods.
Read the full story at the Gloucester Times