Cooke Aquaculture To Create Up to 100 New Jobs
BLACKS HARBOUR, N.B.– Cooke Aquaculture, a family-owned sea farming operation based in Blacks Harbour, will create up to 100 new jobs in New Brunswick over the next five years with support from the provincial government, the company announced Thursday.
Cooke currently has more than 1,300 employees at various locations in the province. The new jobs are expected to be marine site workers, technicians and managers, logistics experts and truck drivers.
Twenty-five of the new positions will be created at the company’s office in Saint John, while the remaining 75 will be spread across Cooke Aquaculture’s head office in Blacks Harbour, and at operations in St. George and Grand Manan.
“It is a tribute to the success of our recent acquisitions that we are able to continue to create new jobs here in New Brunswick,” said Glenn Cooke, the company’s CEO, in a news release. “Opportunities NB and the Government of New Brunswick remain outstanding partners for us as we continue to grow. These new employees are needed to help us reach our latest growth targets and we are very pleased to be able to add so many of them as part of our operations in rural New Brunswick.”
To support the creation of these new jobs, Cooke Aquaculture is eligible for an investment of up to $1.9 million from Opportunities NB. Up to $990,000 of this funding comes in the form of payroll rebates, which are performance-based and only disbursed to a company once it has created and maintained the jobs for one year and provided proof of salary levels and employment.
Opportunities NB will also invest $810,000 in the form of a forgivable loan, and a $100,000 non-repayable contribution, both of which are to be used towards capital improvements to support Cooke’s job growth.
The provincial government estimates that creating up to 100 jobs would contribute $25 million in payroll over five years and $80 million toward the province’s GDP over that same period.