New Brunswick’s value-added food sector encompasses companies producing agriculture and seafood-based products, beverages and other food made from both local and imported resources.
The sector includes live, fresh, frozen, packaged, processed and preserved food products whose value and profitability has been increased by making them more appealing and valuable to the buyer.
Under this definition, the sector includes some companies which are involved in primary production.
New Brunswick’s value-added food industry is an important player in the province’s food sector. Its importance lies not only from direct impacts associated with food processing/ manufacturing activity but also through backward and forward linkages with primary producers and harvesters, transportation and logistics companies, and food distributors. Value-added food companies are important employers throughout the province, serving often as anchors of the economic and social fabric in rural and coastal communities.
The province’s food and beverage manufacturers directly employs approximately 10,000 people in close to 200 processing locations. Food and beverage manufacturers generate three per cent of provincial Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Primary food production in New Brunswick, including crop and animal production and fishing, generates 7,600 jobs.
Source: www.gnb.ca/
