BELFAST - Ducktrap River of Maine on Tuesday announced plans for a major expansion that would increase the size of its seafood smoking and processing facility by neary 50 percent, double the current processing capacity, and support the addition of 40 to 50 new jobs.

According to General Manager Don Cynewski, the expansion is necessary to keep up with sales, which he said have doubled over the last four years. Ducktrap's Norweigan parent company, Marine Harvest, is underwriting the estimated $4 million addition to the Belfast plant — the international company's only processing facility in the United States. 

Cynewski said Ducktrap is currently working at full capacity with the smokers running 24-hours a day, six days a week. Atlantic and Sockeye salmon account for around 60-percent of the product coming out of the Belfast facility, but the plant also processes trout, mackeral, shellfish and several other seafood products. Cynewski said the primary goal of the expansion is to keep up with demand for the company's current products, as opposed to introducing new products.

The announcement, made by Cynewski and Plant Manager Dennis Harris at Tuesday night's City Council meeting got a warm response from city officials. After a passing comment by Harris that he and others in the business were very excited about the project, City Manager Joe Slocum intejected, echoing Harris' sentiment.

"We're very excited about the whole project, too," he said.

Councilor Nancy Hamilton asked what accounted for the recent spike in sales, and Harris guessed that a major factor had been increased inspections by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a result of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act, which significantly boosted funding for the agency.

Ducktrap has always been vigilant about cleanliness, Harris said, and as a result passed the FDA inspection with a perfect score.

"People don't understand clean like we do," he said. "We like to call [smoked salmon] Scottish Sushi."

Harris said other facilities didn't do as well.

"As they went to different areas of the country, we started picking up business," he said.

Though he was cautious not to revel in the misfortune of others, Harris said the business Ducktrap has received, apparently as a result of closures in other places, has been a kind of vindication of his work in Belfast.

"It's leveled the playing field, because it's expensive to do it right," he said.

Harris and Cynewski said the high quality work of Ducktrap's employees has been a major factor in the success of Belfast facility.

Ducktrap River of Maine was started in 1978 by Des Fitzgerald, who fished trout on Kendall Brook, a tributary of Ducktrap River in LIncolnville. Ducktrap River Fish Farm, as it was called then, served local restaurants and markets. Fitzgerald started smoking the fish to stabilize the business and give longer shelf life to the products. As salmon fishing in Maine and New Brunswick blossomed, the business shifted in that direction and grew to meet the demand for the more popular product.

In 1991 Ducktrap moved into its current facility in the Belfast Business Park. The footprint building was roughly doubled to its current 45,000 square foot size in 1998. Marine Harvest acquired the business in 2001.

Ducktrap currently employs 120 full-time workers. The expansion would increase the size of the building from 45,000 to 66,000 square feet. Construction is slated to begin in late April and be finished by September 1.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com