PORTLAND, Maine — There’s no smoke and mirrors about it — Americans are eating a lot more smoked seafood than they used to.
And that demand — part of a larger trend of infusing everything from salts and cocktails to fruit and teas with a kiss of smoky flavor — has smoked seafood producers like Maine’s Ducktrap River moving fast to expand production.
“Our sales have increased to the point where we can’t keep up,” says Don Cynewski, the company’s general manager. “We feel strongly that this is still a relatively new product in the United States and that it has good growth potential.”
By late summer Ducktrap River hopes to finish a $4.5 million expansion that should double its annual production capacity to 5.5 million pounds of smoked salmon — the top-selling variety of smoked seafood in the U.S. — as well as trout, mussels, scallops, shrimp and other products.
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