Sorry Guys... "what about the little guy?"

I'm having a little difficulty here with this concept... Minigoo originally opens and screws local contractors for millions of dollars and now they "re-open" without offering up something to the small contractors they screwed??? There's something fishy here and I find it hard to believe that they're marching forward without some form of repayment scheme for the people they've caused severe hardship to...


Companies get in trouble for a variety of reasons, some of which are out of their control... in our case our plant, Storemark Fixtures in Pooles Corner, came under server pressure due to the change in the Canadian dollar coupled with a major slowdown in the economy... we lost millions of real dollars and we seen competitors like Levi Fixtures in Moncton and Cabinetmaster in Charlottetown fall like flies, due to the shakeups in that industry... but never once did we ever consider avoiding our responsibilities to our suppliers; we talked to our suppliers, we kept our employees informed, we were upfront with our lenders, we developed a scaled down plan and we pooled our resources... and I'm happy to say we're still operating (at about a quarter of the size we once were) but our bills are paid, people are working and our future seems a lot brighter... All this was achieved by "working with people and suppliers" and I can honestly tell you that the majority of them understood our situation and were quite willing to co-operate, especially the little guys....


"Re-opening" by "ignoring the little guy" through some bankruptcy scheme, and not offering up a future settlement plan is just not acceptable... from what I understand in talking with a few experienced fish processors is that the new company, like the old company, hasn't a Snowball's Chance in Hell of being successful in the first place... but the gesture to try and settle with the little guy would have been a little more palpable... I wonder what we'd hear from Minigoo if the shoe was on the other foot and "they" weren't being paid?


Minigoo processing plant to re-open
CBC News
Mar 7, 2011

There are plans to re-open a lobster processing plant on Lennox Island First Nation, on the north coast of P.E.I.

Alan Baker, the band's economic development officer, confirmed Monday that they're just putting the finishing touches on plans to process again this spring. Baker said it will be "business as usual" come the first of May.

Minigoo Fisheries, the company that ran the plant, went bankrupt last July after only a few months in operation, owing creditors more than $3 million. The only entirely native-owned lobster processing plant in the Maritimes, the operation shut down after the spring lobster fishery.

But, just weeks later, the Lennox Island Band was back in the plant, operating under a slightly different name — Minigoo 2010. They hired an experienced manager to process lobster from August to November of last year, and about 70 people worked there.

Owed money
Creditor Chris Deagle, of Deagle Construction, said Minigoo Fisheries went under owing him $140,000 for general contract work. He said the loss has been extremely hard on his company, and his family.

"If they would have come to the table in good faith and said, 'We'll try, we'll put a package together, we will pay you, it might take some time,' I would have been totally open to that," Deagle said. "But to shut the doors, change the name to Minigoo Fisheries 2010 within a few weeks of shutting the doors…"

Mike McGeoghegan, president of the PEI Fishermen's Association said the plant is a good one, and they hope it will work this time. "The plant's open, they'll have the fish and I think it's good. I think they can get the markets going," he said.

Last year, the band council admitted that pretty much everything that could go wrong with Minigoo Fisheries, did. Now, the Lennox Island Mi'kmaq band and fishermen are pinning their hopes on this new company to run the plant successfully.