Doug McRae, Gateway, and Worldwide:
Flying Lobster To The World

by Sandra Dinsmore

Why can’t Maine do what Nova Scotia has done for its lobster industry? Nova Scotia, like Maine, doesn’t have enough air traffic to have demand for wide-bodied cargo planes, though Halifax has a bigger airport than Portland. Neither Maine nor Nova Scotia lobster dealers needing to ship, say, 4500 pounds of lobster to Korea, have the choices they need. They need reliable airfreight options. They need capacity, the ability to hold the amount of lobster they're shipping. And they need their solutions to be cost-effective. Canada has been working to solve these problems.

In 1995, Canadian lobster dealer Douglas McRae and Massachusetts East Coast Seafood partner Michael Tourkistas formed Canadian Gold Seafood Company. This company, adjacent to Halifax International Airport, buys, sells, and exports top quality, premium lobster. Quality comes before price or any other consideration. This, alone, makes Canadian Gold unusual.
Three years later, answering a need for a company to handle the logistics of shipping live, perishable cargo, McRae and Tourkistas started a branch of Tourkistas's Lynn, Massachusetts freight-forwarding company, Worldwide Perishables, at the Halifax airport.

A Canadian lobster exporter who has done business with McRae and asked not to be named said that in a freight forwarder he needs someone who understands all the issues connected with shipping his product. The exporter said he needs,“A travel agent for lobsters and Doug McRae is that travel agent.”

McRae, he said, “has a gift for putting freight deals together with service providers ... to get a paying load each way.” McRae is adept at finding someone to bring back a load of whatever from Korea after unloading those 4500 pounds of lobster. Apparently, McRae has an unusual affinity for logistics and freight forwarding. McRae applies this skill to what’s known in the business as ‘lift’ – the capability to move a load or a designated volume of freight by air from one airport to another. McRae orchestrates the moving of a large volume, the exporter said, “in a highly organized manner.” The exporter added that very few people have McRae’s gift for understanding load and lift and what it takes to really pin down a business model. He said, “McRae provides a vision for clients that nobody else in this market is able to duplicate.”

All McRae will say on the subject is, “We recognized the need here in Halifax to develop the freight forwarding business and to support the seafood industry.” McRae added, “There was recognition that we were lacking proper cargo facilities here in Halifax, and as a result of that, we put together Gateway Facilities. What Gateway is about is creating a proper facility to handle cargo.”

There is much more to it, of course. A group of exporters of various perishables, such as tulips and lobster, invested in and built a 40,000 square foot state-of-the-art complex with a 7,000 square foot refrigerated warehouse. Gateway, which opened last June, is the only refrigerated warehouse north of Miami or east of Los Angeles. Neither Boston nor Chicago, not even New York City, have anything like it.

Over the stormy Christmas holidays, planes that couldn't land in New York or Boston could drop into Halifax, pick up a cargo of lobster, and fly on to Europe or Asia. The 2010 holidays put Gateway on the lobster shipping map. One of the first companies to rent space in the Gateway complex was Federal Express, which means, according to a Nova Scotian lobster exporter, “We all do a lot of business with Fed Ex.”

In the cooler, workers fill orders, from boxing lobster (20 pounds to a box) to building or taking down a pallet (60 boxes or 1200 pounds). Big, wide-bellied cargo freight planes can taxi right up to the door of the cooler to pick up their perishable cargo. This contributes a tremendous amount of quality control, according to a lobster dealer who sells only hard shell lobster around the world.

McRae said packing product, whether lobsters or tulips, means keeping the warehouse at an optimum temperature. In Boston, by comparison, “They bring the product into Chelsea, and in a lot of cases what they'll do is they'll prepare the airline pallets, but then they have to put [them] on a truck to bring [them] over to the shippers at Logan,” McRae said. Not the same as taxiing right up to the doors of a refrigerated warehouse.

Asked to talk about himself, McRae seemed taken aback, as if he didn’t quite know how he’d started Canadian Gold Seafood, became head of the Halifax division of Worldwide Perishables, and a partner and president of Gateway Facilities, ULC. After stammering for a few seconds, he said, “I started the seafood company, then started looking for other opportunities as well.”

On the other hand, McRae's business partner Tourkistas can't say enough good things about him. The partners met in 1995. “We found we were on the same wave-length. We believe in the same core ideas,” Tourkistas said. He calls the partnership, “A wonderful arrangement.” Tourkistas said McRae manages Canadian Gold and does most of the decision-making. He thinks the partnership works because of his and McRae’s personalities. For his part in the business, Tourkistas said, “We provide financial and administrative support.”

Tourkistas referred to Gateway as a joint venture. “Gateway is a wonderful project. We will have great success,” he said. Another exporter said that although the partners both invested and provided experience and design suggestions, “Doug has been the driving force behind the project.” Tourkistas said McRae brought the new warehouse in, on time and on budget. “Today my problem is that I don’t have enough partners like Doug,” he said. “He is incredibly honest.”
Thanks to McRae’s vision, Canadians can now ship lobster from Halifax. Although Maine can truck product to Boston, if Maine had a Gateway, it would make a huge difference.

FMI: go to www.yhzgateway.com