May 9, 2016 — Gloucester Seafood Processing Inc. is based in Gloucester. It is a stand-alone subsidiary of Mazzetta Co., which is not.
Problem?
Well, this is Gloucester, where life tends to be a tad provincial, as you might expect from a city that coined the phrase “up the line” to deal with the remainder of the North American continent.
It’s not surprising then that the arrival of Gloucester Seafood Processing about a year ago at the former Good Harbor Filet plant in the Blackburn Industrial Park was greeted with a measure of uncertainty and — in some quarters — downright suspicion and veiled whispers of carpet-bagging.
“The whole thing, while the place was being set up, was that we wanted it run by local people,” said Dave Fitzgerald, the New Zealander brought in by Highland Park, Illinois-based Mazzetta for the plant’s startup. “You see some of those comments about, ‘Here’s that company from Chicago’s going to take everything out of here.’ It’s not that. It’s a locally run company.”
Fitzgerald, as he uttered those words, sat at the head of a table in a conference room inside Gloucester Seafood Processing’s administrative offices, surrounded by front office colleagues, all of whom are sons and daughters of Gloucester.