SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Brian Abbott wants to sell the best product he can and making Great Slave Fish Products Ltd, his recently purchased business venture, environmentally friendly and efficient is how he plans to do it.

Brian Abbott, co-owner of Great Slave Fish Products Ltd., prepared Monday to fillet some 700 pounds of fish. Abbott took over the fish processing plant near Jolliffe Island last June. He wants to make it as environmentally friendly and efficient as possible. - Andrew Livingstone/NNSL photo

Abbott, along with co-owner Henry Jewer, have worked day in and day out to get it up and running the way they want since taking over the fish processing plant on the banks of Jolliffe Island last June from previous owner Archie Buckley.

"We completely repainted the place and rewired the whole barge," Abbott said, showing Yellowknifer all the new bells and whistles at the plant, which includes a propane toilet that turns all waste to ashes. "I didn't know it existed until we got into this business. It's another way we can make things efficient and good for the environment. We've been at it since last spring, just the two of us really. 90 per cent was us."

The plant has a new water filtration system in place to clean the water used during fish processing, some 800 to 1,000 gallons of it daily. Abbott said before the water cleaning system was installed, the dirty water used to sit underneath the plant in large tanks, pumped out by a sewage truck on a regular basis.

"We've got a chemical and chlorine filtering (system) and the waste water it gets all cycled through and when it's the end of the day we dump it back out into the lake," Abbott said. "We're sterilizing it, cleaning it and putting it back. We're not putting bacteria out there and we're using no chemicals.

Being respectful of the environment is the main goal of producing the best product the company can. That's the whole point, to do it as efficient as possible," Abbott said. "There's no spillage anymore, it's not dirty, it's a clean place to produce fish. (The lake) is where we're getting the fish from so we have to respect it."

Filleting some 500 to 800 pounds of fish a day, Abbott said it has great potential to be a lucrative business venture with plans to sell fish all year round, with at least one location in the winter, from their fish truck, and two in the summer - the truck and their fishing boat, adding the pair have plans to build up a local market.

"We're bringing anywhere from 500 to 800 pounds a day and we're selling about half of it per day," he said. "The rest we are freezing and putting it away so when come break up we have stuff to sell. In the past when break up came there wouldn't be anything for sale, so we want to be ready for it.

"This is an opportunity you don't get anywhere in the world. A fishery like this with great quality and it's dormant? It's utterly amazing and here we are. We're going to create a great northern product." The fact he just stumbled onto it makes it even more exciting, said Abbott.

"I love boats and fishing and this just kind of all worked out," Abbott said, happy to be getting out of the sandblasting business which he had made his career for many years. "We sort of stumbled on it. (A) Friend of mine was out of work and asked me if I was interested in going in half on a fish boat and then it just kind of came about that way."

While the company produces clean, quality whitefish and trout, along with some other local fish like burbot for human consumption, Abbott said it plans to take production to another level.

"Fish fertilizer is the best stuff in the world for rebuilding depleted soil," he said of one of the plans to minimize wastage.

"We'll have the best fertilizer. The stuff from the ocean has a lot of pollutants in it and here we don't have that stuff. Down south organic produce is a big thing, so we hope to tackle that market.

Abbott expects fish fertilizer to be a big seller along with fish patties and cat and dog food, which he hopes to sell in southern markets.

"Normally they'd throw all the waste away so we're going to turn the stuff into fish patties and we're also going to be using the rest to make cat and dog food," he said. "We want to get more bang for our buck. We bring everything in and we use every bit of the fish."