Gateway Ships 90 Tons of Lobster
on One Plane

by Sandra Dinsmore

Loading a plane with live lobster at Gateway Airfreight Facilities, Halifax, Nova Scotia. An aircraft pallet holds from 120 to 160 boxes of live lobster, depending on where it fits in the aircraft. Each box holds from 8 to 14 lobsters, depending on size. Richard Stern photo

Just before I left on a reporting trip to Nova Scotia in September, Karl Riches, General Manager of Gateway Facilities at the Halifax airport, e-mailed me to suggest I change my schedule. “If you’re available on the 21st,” he wrote, “you would see the operation of 90 tons of lobster being processed through our facility prior to the arrival of a Korean Airlines plane.”

180,000 lbs. of live lobster in one room! 180,000 lbs. of lobster packed onto a single plane! As Riches wrote, “It would be something very memorable. To see so much lobster is a sight to see.”

In those three sentences, Riches, who manages the only chilled warehouse north of Miami, sold me. When was I likely to see that much lobster in one place? Indeed, this was an opportunity not to be missed. I changed my interviewing schedule, switched dates of interviews, and re-figured driving plans. Because the people I had made arrangements to interview are in the lobster business, they all understood and were generous about re-scheduling our interviews. I’d be adding many miles to an already long trip of driving from west to east, then up to the northern tip of Cape Breton and back down the east coast to the southern tip of Nova Scotia and back up the west coast halfway. To that I’d be adding an additional trip to and from Halifax and driving west clear across the island again. But this was an adventure! I figured it would be worth all the extra time and miles, and it was.

My cousin Candace Stern, our navigator; her husband Richard, our driver and my photographer; and I arrived at Halifax Stanfield International Airport and the Gateway Facility in the early afternoon of September 21st. Riches had advised me to dress warmly. We were going to be viewing this packing of live lobster in a big, cold, 7,000-square-foot warehouse that was 4 degrees Celsius. (Canada uses Celsius; the warehouse was just as chilly at 39 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Puzzled that so much live lobster was going to the small country of South Korea, I asked Riches, who explained that Korean Airlines has the contract to pick up the planeload of lobster in Nova Scotia and deliver it to various destinations in Asia. But the question remained as to how all those hundreds of thousands of lbs. of live lobster were going to fit in a single airplane. They would, Riches assured me. This was not the first time up to 90 tons of live lobster had been packed for shipment at Gateway’s warehouse. This shipment of 180,000 lbs. was made up by only five or six lobster businesses. One exporter told me he had one ton or 2,000 lbs. on this flight. That was small potatoes when you considered the other five exporters may have averaged 18 tons or 36,000 lbs. apiece.

New England and Canadian lobster prices have been propped up by the Asian markets. Some of those markets now buy lower priced soft shell. Korea continues to want hard shell only. Many of these markets are always changing. Richard Stern photo

The ability to keep thousands and thousands of lbs. of live lobster alive, angry, and kicking is why Gateway has contracts for shipping anything that needs to be chilled. As an example, Riches said, “British Airways ships Scottish salmon to Halifax. [Gateway] is a great facility for what comes into this airport.” He added that Gateway also builds cargo—the term for packing and wrapping box after box of perishable goods onto aircraft pallets—for Air Canada, British Airways, Iceland Air, and Condor (a European airline). He explained, “We check the quantity of boxes against the documentation from shippers, then we store the product in the warehouse until it’s loaded into the plane.”

Korean Air is one of the biggest airlines Riches deals with. “They take the most lobster,” he said. Other items that need to be chilled include tuna, mussels, eels, and fish oil. He noted that 80 percent of Gateway’s business is made up of shipping some fish product.

To accomplish this means operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Product usually comes in Monday mornings by 11 a.m., Riches said. A few of the staff come in at 5 a.m. As stock increases, another shift starts between 8 and 9 a.m. Shifts run between 8 and 12 hours because packing has to be finished and all the boxes wrapped and built on pallets (once the boxes are packed and wrapped, they’re called completed-built-cargo pallets) ready to be fitted into a plane by 8 p.m. Around 11:59 pm, when work usually ends, the lobsters have already been loaded on the aircraft.

Each box of live lobster holds between 8 and 14 lobsters, depending on their size. A wooden pallet holds 25 boxes. Depending on where they go in the aircraft, an aircraft pallet holds from 120 to 160 boxes. Aluminum cans (seen above the packed boxes in the photo of the Gateway crew packing a pallet) hold 50 boxes each. These cans go in the lower part of cargo or passenger aircraft.

Fitting 90 tons of lobster into one airplane has to be somewhat like completing a great big puzzle. It can’t be easy. And sometimes, Riches said, the warehouse is filled with boxes of lobster waiting to be packed onto aircraft pallets. Although Riches said the sound of the lobsters can be heard all day throughout the warehouse, and when he turns off all the lights, all he hears is the eerie sound of live lobsters scrabbling in their boxes.