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Portland Fish Exchange subcommittee weighs tiered fees, direct offloads and lumping concerns to attract larger landings
Summary
The subcommittee discussed options to attract larger boats, including contract offloads into vats and tiered fee structures (examples cited: 10' per lb for simple vat offloads, 20' for grading into totes, $30 per vat), and debated whether PFE staff performing lumping creates a double-pay issue that reduces exchange revenue.
The PFE subcommittee spent significant time discussing how to lure larger landings to Portland, focusing on contract offloads (vat-based direct unloading), fee options and labor logistics.
Rob (a committee member) described how contract offloads work: "They come out of the boat. They get they get dumped in a vat and ice, and then they get forklifted..." He and Robert Vanmeter explained three current options: run fish through the vat without grading (about 10' per pound), grade and put fish into totes (about 20' per pound), or offer a per-vat handling price (examples cited included roughly $30 per vat). Vanmeter said the exchange already handles some contract offloads for boats that bypass the auction and that the operation can scale if receiving buyers provide containers at the facility.
Members discussed operational capacity: Vanmeter said PFE aims for roughly 40,000 pounds as a practical upper load for a single auction day and that spikes to 60,000 occurred when boats under-hail. Committee members recommended staggering landings across days and noted trucking cutoffs to Boston (Galway) constrain auction start times.
A central labor question was whether PFE staff performing lumping on direct offloads could be effectively "double paid" (on PFE payroll and by the boat). Tracy Pierce and others raised concerns about potential conflicts and revenue leakage if the majority of work on a 60,000-pound direct offload produced little net income for the exchange while staff received lumping pay from boats. "Lumping is very hard work and it's paid by the boat," Vanmeter said; members proposed recruiting non-PFE lumpers or revising fees so the exchange retains revenue when staff performs the extra work.
The committee agreed to continue the fee-structure conversation at a future subcommittee meeting and requested that Vanmeter provide clearer costing and operational details, including who is doing lumping, how lumpers are paid, and how fees would change with larger direct offloads. Kayla and Heather agreed to follow up with staff and have Vanmeter present refined options at the next subcommittee meeting.
The subcommittee did not adopt new fees at the meeting, but members expressed interest in a tiered approach that balances attracting large boats with covering PFE staffing and capital costs.
