In The News

Clam specialist Blount Seafood of Warren in Rhode Island , north east USA, has been expanding its product line to include more species after a century of operations.

Its soup business has expanded so much that the company is building a new plant in Fall River, Massachusetts, to house the operation.

The new plant will focus on prepared foods, while the older plant will shuck calms and prepare soup.  Additional space will allow Blount expand into niche breaded oysters and scallops.

The first Blounts processed oysters 100 years ago.  The 1946 incorporation ‘pulled together the remaining pieces of the oyster business’ and focused on clams found in Narragansett Bay.  ‘Our business is maximizing clams,’ says president F Nelson (Todd) Blount.

In the 1970s, the company focused on clam products, expanding its sourcing to include sea clams from New Jersey to Massachusetts for sale mainly to industrial users.  The 1980s saw a move into selling clams to foodservice.

‘In the 1990s we began adding value,’ says Mr. Blount.  The company started producing breaded clam ‘super strips’ and clam chowder - still the firm’s specialty. 

‘We began to add new formats for clam use and clams are still 50% of what we do.  Most people can them, but we do IQF frozen so we’re different immediately.’

The company’s expertise in repacking IQF clams into restaurant-size packages led the firm to move into high-quality calamari and mussels for food service.  ‘But we try not to get too far away from clams.  Only one step removed,’ says Mr. Blount.

Besides the Warren plant and the new Fall River plant, Blount Seafood has a breading and hand-shucking operation in New Bedford and a distribution facility in East Providence, Rhode Island.

Although clams are the primary Blount product, soups now include an array of other seafood chowders and soups.

‘Our overall vision is pushing toward soups and prepared foods…getting as much value out of clams as we can.  We dabble in retail, but Sysco is our number one distributor,’ says Mr. Blount.