Louisbourg Seafood moves to save frozen food worth millions in North Sydney facility without power

Update, 3:45 p.m.: Louisbourg Seafoods says it has been told by Nova Scotia Power that the electricity will be restored to its North Sydney operation later today and a generator will not be needed. 

Louisbourg Seafoods says it will move a generator to its facility in North Sydney, N.S., today to protect "millions and millions of dollars" worth of frozen product inside a building without power due to post-tropical storm Fiona.

Senior manager Allan MacLean says this weekend the company has been moving product out of facilities and into refrigerated trucks but Northsyde Processing is too big for that.

"We have well over probably a million and a half pounds of, you know, snow crab, shrimp and bait and things like that in there," MacLean told CBC News.

"As long as you don't open the doors you're OK. But we've been monitoring the temperatures and today we're going to get a generator over to the Northsyde facility and set up so that we don't risk losing any, any product," he said.

MacLean said there is no immediate danger of spoilage but getting the freezer operational is a priority given the product is "worth millions and millions dollars."

'We feel extremely fortunate'

The company's vessels and major plants along the coast of Cape Breton down to Canso are intact.

"We lost some small infrastructure that was right on the coast, a buying station building. We had the roof on one of our smaller facilities where we hold bait in storage. The wind took the roof off but all the big plants have survived without any major damage so we feel extremely fortunate given what we see and hear about damage along the coast," Maclean said.

In northern Cape Breton the Victoria Coop processing plant at Neil's Harbour was damaged in the storm.

Power was also knocked out in a building holding frozen products.

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