Topsham company aims to bring fish canning back to Maine

A Topsham industrial park just off Interstate 295 could soon become the center of Maine’s fish-canning comeback. Maine Canned Fish, co-founded by Joshua Scherz, is trying to revive a coastal industry that helped define parts of the state for generations before Maine’s last large-scale sardine cannery closed in 2010.

The company is not proposing a museum piece or a nostalgic side business. Scherz wants to pack flounder, cod, oysters and other seafood in attractive tins, a move aimed at creating new marketing opportunities for fishermen up and down the coast. By putting the operation in Topsham, the company is anchoring the project in Sagadahoc County’s industrial corridor rather than on a remote waterfront, with access to major transportation routes and a central Midcoast location.

That matters because the economics of seafood have changed since the old cannery era ended. A modern cannery can do more than preserve fish. It can add value, give harvesters another buyer for their catch and create a downstream business that includes packaging, distribution and branding. In a region where much of the seafood economy still depends on raw landings and volatile market prices, a processing company like Maine Canned Fish could widen the options for fishermen looking to sell a broader mix of species.

Scherz said he hoped the operation would be up and running by this summer. If it gets there, the company could begin testing whether there is enough demand for Maine-branded canned seafood to support a new supply chain around it. The potential upside for Topsham is not just one storefront or one warehouse, but a small manufacturing base that could draw in local labor, trucking, packaging and other support services.

The larger question is whether an old Maine industry can be repackaged for modern consumers without losing the local economic value that once made it so important. In Topsham, that test is now a live business plan, with one foot in the state’s cannery past and the other in a regional seafood economy still looking for new ways to grow.