NEW BEDFORD – A Massachusetts-based fishing and processing company has filed for bankruptcy.
Blue Harvest Fisheries LLC filed Chapter 7 protection on Sept. 8 in U.S. federal court in Delaware, according to a report in The New Bedford Light. Unlike Chapter 11, all of the company’s assets will be liquidated to pay off its debt. After that, all remaining debt will be expunged.
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“I guess we’re not getting paid,” said Randy Martin, a machinist at Harbor Hydraulics & Machine Inc. in Fairhaven, Mass., told the New Bedford Light. He said Blue Harvest owed “a lot of companies a lot of money.”
Blue Harvest Fisheries shut down all fishing operations on Sept. 1 and closed its processing plant in April, laying off 64 people, according to the report.
According to the court filings, the company filed nine separate bankruptcy cases that included 40 individual LLCs with ties the Blue Harvest. Private equity firm Bregal Partners is listed as owning 89.5% of the parent company that owns 92.9% of all other subsidiaries, including the company’s vessels, permits and other assets, according to the New Bedford Light. Bregal Partners is an investment arm of a firm that is ultimately owned by one family of Dutch billionaire industrialists – the Brenninkmeijer family.
An array of former Blue Harvest executives, lawyers and financiers own the remaining 10.5% of the parent company, according to the report. It includes Michael Arougheti, CEO of New York finance company Ares Management, and former Blue Harvest CEOs Keith Decker and Jeffrey Davis.
The bankruptcy filings list that the company has between 1,000 to 5,000 creditors.
Former Blue Harvest spokesman Bob Vanasse provided little comment to the New Bedford Light. He said the company cut ties with his communications firm, Stove Boat Co., which has handled public relations for the company for over a year. Questions were referred to Bregal Partners, which the New Bedford Light could not reach for comment.
Blue Harvest was founded in 2015. The company first entered the scallop industry before expanding into groundfish and importing fish. It purchased midsized fleets along the East Coast and centered its operations on a 220,000-square-foot processing plant on the New Bedford waterfront. In 2020, it acquired 12 vessels and 27 permits from Carlos Rafael, who at the time was serving a four-year sentence for fraud related to mislabeling fish and was forced to sell his fleet.
