JONESPORT — Voters are expected to decide at a special town meeting Wednesday, Aug. 5, whether to amend a municipal ordinance to accommodate Kingfish Maine.
The meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Jonesport Elementary School.
The proposed amendments would give Kingfish 30 months to substantially start construction on its 22-acre, land-based aquaculture project near Chandler Bay, extending the current 24-month deadline.
If approved by voters, the revised ordinance would give Kingfish more time, greater flexibility and less oversight than current commercial permit rules require.
The Maine Department of Environmental Protection must also approve the changes before they take effect.
Kingfish Maine has courted Jonesport since November 2019, when the company first proposed building a recirculating aquaculture system to grow an estimated 8,500 metric tons of yellowtail kingfish annually, a species that prefers warm water.
Environmental concerns sparked immediate opposition, triggering legal challenges that stalled the project for years. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court cleared Kingfish Maine to proceed in April 2025, affirming a lower court decision that upheld the state Department of Environmental Protection permit.
Article 5 of the warrant contains the bulk of the proposed changes, which would give Kingfish 30 months to substantially start construction. The 30-month clock would begin when the amendment takes effect.
Under the current ordinance, which Jonesport voters approved in July 2025, the company has 24 months to begin construction. Under the existing terms, that 24-month clock started when Kingfish won its final court appeal in April 2025.
However, with just nine months remaining under the current deadline, the company has yet to break ground and is asking the town for more time, which requires a change to the ordinance.
Kingfish’s lawyer, Adrian P. Kendall of Norman Hanson DeTroy in Portland, said the proposed accommodation is not unreasonable.
“There’s an awful lot to get going, especially because we’re starting from (a) dead stop, right?” he said. “Everything was primed, ready to go. We had contracts all lined up back when the permits were first approved, way back in time before all of the appeals.”
The closest comparison the town has, Kendall said, is residential subdivision ordinances, which give builders five years to show a substantial start before they have to reapply for their permits.
The warrant article also asks residents to waive the requirement that 30 percent of the project be completed in the allotted time frame.
Kingfish said meeting that benchmark for a large-scale, land-based facility is impractical.
“Given the scope of the project, the 30 percent standard is excessive and unreasonable,” according to the company.
Under the proposed amendments, a “substantial start” for the Kingfish project would require tangible physical work on the site, progress significant enough to demonstrate intent and capacity to complete the project and actions that go beyond preliminary steps toward meeting regulatory obligations.
Meanwhile, Kingfish Maine’s parent company announced a restructuring in May following two years of financial struggles. Shortly after, the company was placed on the Euronext exchange’s “penalty bench” for failing to publish its audited 2025 annual report on time.
The restructuring is expected to give Eyrir Invest hf., an Icelandic investment company, a 31.4 percent stake in Kingfish. According to the company, the restructuring is expected to relieve some of its current debt and provide a cash infusion of 21 million euros (about $23.9 million).
Eyrir describes itself as “a family office operating as (an) agile private equity-style investor.” It was founded in 2000 by Arni Oddur Thordarson and his father, Thordur Magnusson.
Thordarson will sit on the supervisory board of Kingfish. He is known for his work building JBT Marel, a global company specializing in advanced automation and robotic food processing technology and plants.
Kingfish Chief Executive Officer Vincent Erenst said the automation of Kingfish Maine is to be expected, but will not affect the number of jobs.
“Indeed, our new investor has ample experience designing and building semi-automated processing plants for fish and poultry,” Erenst wrote in an email. “This automation is directed at automating highly repetitive tasks, similar to what is happening in other areas of the manufacturing, e.g., the automotive industry.”
He noted that “in developed countries like the USA and many countries of Europe it has become nearly impossible to find people for these types of tasks.”
He also wrote: “Kingfish Maine will be far from a fully automated facility. Skilled employees will be needed to oversee fish husbandry, health and welfare, water quality, engineering, maintenance, harvesting, quality assurance, and facility operations.”
“As previously announced,” he added, “initially, Kingfish Maine is expected to create around 70 full-time, year-round jobs and this number will further increase when the facility reaches full production capacity.”
The warrant article to be considered would allow a permit holder to request revisions to an existing permit approval without the need to undergo a full review.
“As we were reviewing the ordinance, it became clear that there isn’t a provision in there that allows the planning board simply to amend a permit,” Kendall said. “I mean, they’re all volunteers, right? Frank (Frank Smith, chair of the Jonesport Planning Board) is a lobsterman and Paul (Paul Iossa) in real estate. I mean, they’ve all got other, you know, day jobs or, or most of them do, so, maybe some retirees on there. And what we wanted to avoid was — you shouldn’t have to go through this whole thing again, right, just to tweak an element.”
Kendall stressed that any revisions would still go through the Planning Board and remain in the public eye.
Harry S. Fish Jr., who chairs the Jonesport Board of Selectmen, said he strongly supports Kingfish and is not worried about an automated fish plant.
“I went to the Netherlands to see what they have over there myself, and I think it would be profitable for the town of Jonesport,” he said. “I saw the jobs in the Netherlands. It’s not done by robots. It’s people.
“I don’t understand why there is so much negativity to try to improve the financial standing of Jonesport.”
Fish said he believes the property tax rate, or mill rate, could drop to $13 or $14 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, and the company could provide 40 to 50 jobs initially, growing to 100 positions within five years.
“And these are good-paying jobs,” he said, suggesting they could range from $60,000 to $100,000 a year.
