Company
Family-owned since 1966.
From a Kitsilano fish counter to a vertically integrated seafood company spanning British Columbia, Alberta and Alaska, still family-owned, still obsessed with fish.
1966
A fish market in Kitsilano
John Heras, lovingly called Papou by all nine (and counting) of his grandchildren, opens a neighbourhood fish market near the Vancouver waterfront, with his father, his brother and his brother-in-law all pitching in. A family business from the very first day.
1974
The Ladner plant
John's baby, and the place where he became Big John. 7 Seas turns producer, offloading boats, processing and boxing fish right on the Fraser River, much like our Alaskan operation does today.
1998
The changing of the guard
George, the oldest of John's sons and full time in the business since 1995, begins taking the helm. The whole second generation grew up working summers at the counter and on the docks, and one by one they came aboard for good: Mike in 2000, James in 2008, Nick in 2012.
2009
The move to Richmond
George leads the move from Ladner into a retrofitted 30,000-square-foot Richmond facility built to the highest levels of food safety, and ready to ship globally.
2016
Back to the source, in Alaska
A strategic opportunity seized: the Alaskan Fish Factory in Homer joins the group, with offloading, primary processing and direct relationships with fishermen on Cook Inlet.
2017
East to Edmonton
Growth heads east as 7 Seas Alberta opens in Edmonton, extending distribution across Northern Alberta, Calgary, Saskatchewan and the Yukon.
Today
A vertically integrated seafood company
110+ people in Richmond, a regional operation in Edmonton, the original market in Kitsilano and the Alaskan Fish Factory. One family company, integrated from dock to delivery.
In his own words
George on where we're going
Ninety seconds with our CEO on what a family seafood company owes the people who buy from it.
1:42
What hasn't changed
Sixty years on, 7 Seas is still a family company. The scale is different (trucks running day and night, fish landing at our Homer facility, product shipping to more than ten export countries), but the job is the same one it was at the Kitsilano counter: know the fish, stand behind it, and take care of the people who buy it.
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