Lee Corey Wants You To Know
FREDERICTON–Corey Nutrition wants us to know they’re still very much alive and kicking.
After over 30 years in business, founder Lee Corey wants the company to be more visible in the business community to serve as proof that it’s possible to grow and thrive in New Brunswick.
Lee Corey says he’s kept his head low over the 33 years Corey Nutrition has been in business but believes now is the time to be more vocal.
“I’m just sick and tired of people telling me that I live in a shitty province with no future,” Corey said. “Excuse me, there are a lot of great companies in this province and the Maritimes and there are a lot of smart people here.”
“Business is very important to our economy. It is our economy… What we need is more people to come here and build businesses that employ people and pay taxes and that’s where an economy comes from.”
Since founding the company, Corey has worked tirelessly to help it grow but came to realize that he and his employees, who’d been by his side for over 25 years, didn’t have the particular knowledge or experience to take Corey Nutrition to the next level of profitability.
Corey came from traditional New Brunswick beginnings. After growing up on his family’s dairy farm in Havelock, he went on to work as a marine biologist. Corey saw an opportunity to provide the fish aquaculture industry in Atlantic Canada with basic equipment and then pellets to feed fish. He invested the money he made in better equipment and production, and his company grew steadily.
“I’ve always believed in buying the very best equipment that I could possibly afford and hiring the very best people that I could find and over a long time, that has panned out nicely,” Corey said.
Today they’ve grown to a staff of over forty employees and their main business is pet food.
Corey believes he has contributed everything he has to growing the company and has now passed much of the responsibility of pushing the company even further to CEO Wayne Arsenault.
“Basically we were trapped by our own limited knowledge and we needed to bring in hybrid vigour, some new genetics, some outside business experience that would allow us to grow to the next level,” Corey said. “We were levelled off at about $30 million a year and couldn’t get bigger. The reason why is we just don’t know how… we’re going to grow now and we’re not going to take a breath until we pass $100 million (a year).”
Arsenault explains that they began manufacturing high energy dog food specifically for sled dogs. They then moved on to incorporate foods for companion animals and pets.
“Our roots are in aquaculture but we’ve developed at the same time a real competence in the pet food industry. We’re about half and half now. Both are growing at a very nice rate.”
Arsenault said that what makes the Corey brands unique is that they are each designed with a different purpose in mind. Their Inukshuk brand is nutrient dense and is mostly used for dogs with jobs: sled dogs, guard dogs, military dogs and police dogs, all of which have high energy requirements. They are now introducing a new brand called North Paw, which is grain free and will be rolled out in Canada and Mexico.
Corey Nutrition sells to a growing list of countries around the world. While their aquaculture business is mostly in Atlantic Canada and New England, their pet foods are sold in Mexico, Peru, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greenland, Russia and Indonesia.
The company is putting more focus on marketing and advertising, getting the word out that they exist and are thriving here in New Brunswick.
“We came from the mindset of ‘I’m just going to create a great food and of course you’re going to want to buy it.’ That’s worked but now as we want to grow even larger, you have to communicate that message and that’s why we’ve brought in some bright people from a marketing perspective in order to start to build that Corey brand,” Arsenault said.
By growing his company even further and speaking up about how businesses can succeed in New Brunswick, Corey hopes to help change attitudes towards businesses in the province and return to an era when people from here were seen as fighters.
“We were tough little bastards from New Brunswick. If we were from here people kept an eye on us because they weren’t sure what we were going to do next and we were aggressive and we went and got business. Now we have this sort of skulking in the shadows attitude and we don’t want to stand up,” he said.
“I think it’s time that I came out of the quiet room and started making a little bit of noise about how we’ve got a great business here and we’ve been here a long time. It’s a family business, it’s a heritage business. I’m not leaving, I’m not quitting, I’m not for sale. I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it right here.”