PORTLAND, Maine – California has its raisins, Florida its oranges and Vermont has maple syrup. Now, Maine's lobster industry is trying to market its brand more broadly and increase sales of the state's best-known seafood.
The annual marketing budget for lobsters will increase more than six-fold to $2.2 million under a law taking effect in October, launching what some call a new era for the industry. The goal is to get more people in the U.S. and abroad to buy more Maine lobster and related products at restaurants and in stores, while increasing prices to help fishermen boost their incomes.
Marketing was little more than an afterthought in the lobster industry before the 1990s, when the annual catch was typically 20 million pounds or less. That changed in 1991 with the creation of the industry-funded Maine Lobster Promotion Council, a small operation whose budget this past year was around $370,000.
But the lobster harvest has ballooned to previously unimagined levels — a record 127 million pounds was hauled in Maine last year— and prices have remained low since tanking when the global economy went sour in 2008. Fishermen received $2.69 a pound on average for their catch last year, a nearly 40 per cent drop since 2007 and the lowest price since 1994. So lobstermen for the most part agree that the industry needs to somehow better market its product.
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