Page 28 - Port of Baltimore - Issue 3 - 2022

PORT BUSINESS
A Seafood Giant
BY TINA IRGANG LEADERMAN
NAFCO WHOLESALE FISH DEALERS WORKS WITH
THE PORT TO PUT FISH ON AMERICA’S DINNER TABLES
The question “What does your company do?” is one every executive has heard, and it doesn’t always have an easy or straightforward answer. Not so in the case of NAFCO Wholesale Fish Dealers, which has been in the seafood business since 1991.
Quite simply, “we feed America,” said Mark Emmons, NAFCO’s Vice President of Global Sourcing. It’s no idle boast either — the company works 24/7 to supply supermarkets and club stores all across the continental U.S. with the finest, freshest seafood.
NAFCO — a brand in the corporate portfolio of Stanley Pearlman Enterprises, Inc. — operates out of three facilities in the Jessup area: an 88,000-square-foot processing facility for fresh fish, a 70,000-square-foot frozen distribution facility, and a 170,000-square-foot additional frozen distribution facility that’s currently under construction to accommodate the company’s growth.
Altogether, NAFCO employs more than 600 people, which “makes us one of the largest full-line seafood distributors in the United States,” said Emmons, who started his career in seafood at age 17, working in New York’s legendary Fulton Fish Market. He joined NAFCO 30 years ago, working his way up from fish sales to his current position.
A Total Seafood Solution
Though its value proposition its simple, NAFCO’s daily operations are anything but. In fact, they involve a global network of staggering complexity.
“We run our own fleet of tractor trailers and chassis specific to our activity at the Port of Baltimore,” said Emmons. “We average 75 to 80 imported containers a week.”
Seventy-five percent of all seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. So while NAFCO certainly buys fresh domestic products, such as crabs and rockfish from the Chesapeake Bay, quite a lot of its business consists of frozen imports.
“We go to Peru for mahi-mahi, to
[26] The Port of Baltimore ■ ISSUE 3 / 2022
PHOTOS COURTESY OF NAFCO