NAICS 3117Industry group · 4-digitnational market1 market record

Seafood product preparation and packaging

SoftwareDigital Shelf & Product Content Software 311 · Food Safety & Traceability Software 311

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in canning seafood, including soup; smoking, salting and drying seafood; preparing fresh fish by removing heads, fins, scales, bones and entrails; shucking and packing fresh shellfish; processing marine fats and oils; and freezing seafood. Establishments known as floating factory ships, that are engaged in shipboard processing of seafood, are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 372
Under 10 employeesA: 29%
Establishments · USA: 528
Employment · USA: 29,146
Payroll · USA: $1.7B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–46317%

5–94512%

10–194612%

20–497119%

50–996016%

100–1994412%

200–499359%

500+82%

Of 372 Canadian establishments with employees, 29% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Nova Scotia8824%

Newfoundland and Labrador5816%

British Columbia5816%

Quebec5615%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 311, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

national competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 311 Food manufacturing

Inspected facilities and a handful of buyers with listing fees. The reachable end is small-batch and regional, where the product can carry a premium the commodity line cannot.

Who sets the price: Grocery retailers, a concentrated buyer in Canada.
The software it runs on: Food-safety, traceability, recipe and batch ERP.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Seafood Processing PlantOne thing must be true

binding constraint: defensibility

The pre-screen paired small-scale processing with the fishing records, and the pairing is the problem. Commercial Fishing Licence & Quota (114) found that the right to catch has been capitalised into an asset its owners rent out. The plant is the next link along, and it owns neither end of the chain. Upstream, fish comes from licence and quota holders, many tied to a buyer by financing, or from integrated companies that land their own — when Premium Brands and a Mi'kmaq coalition took Clearwater private in 2021 at $8.25 a share, about $1B including debt [A], they were buying a company built on its own offshore licences. Downstream sit grocery and foodservice buyers. High Liner Foods, the listed Canadian processor with the strongest brand on that side, shows what the middle earns. In fiscal 2025 sales rose 7.1% to US$1,026.9M while volume rose 0.9% — the growth was price and mix, passed through from raw material and tariffs — and gross margin fell from 22.7% to 20.7%, adjusted EBITDA margin from 10.8% to 8.9% [A]. If a national brand cannot hold its margin when input costs move, a custom processor with no brand and no quota will not either. It is paid a processing fee set by whoever controls the fish. Nor is this a small-shop industry. Only 29% of the 372 Canadian plants have fewer than ten employees, while 40% have fifty or more [A] — seasonal lines with large crews, concentrated in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, where a processing licence is itself a provincial decision. The value in seafood sits in the quota and on the shelf, and the plant in between rents its margin from both.

NAICS 31176 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Filed above — wider than this industry

Operating businessScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Consumer Packaged Goods Brand OperationStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Shelf space is bought, not won. A new CPG brand pays slotting fees, funds trade promotions, carries the retailer's payment terms and absorbs returns before it learns whether the product sells, and co-manufacturing minimums put the first production run in the tens of thousands of units. The direct-to-consumer route that was supposed to bypass all of that now costs more in paid acquisition than the margin on a grocery-priced item supports. The product content software this industry buys is screened separately at the same code.

NAICS 3115 vendors named10 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

Sold across the wider branch

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Digital Shelf & Product Content SoftwareStructure decides

binding constraint: entry cost

Incumbent Salsify and Syndigo

The product is a retailer integration map, and it takes years and a partner team to build. Salsify raised about $200M at a $2B valuation on the strength of syndicating content to more than 1,000 retailers for brands including P&G, Coca-Cola, Mars and Kraft Heinz; Syndigo holds the other half of the same network. A new entrant must rebuild those connections one retailer at a time while each retailer keeps changing its content requirements — the same moat the EDI record at 419 describes, in a different format.

NAICS 3114 vendors named3 sourced figuresOpen →

Vertical softwareScreenedfiled at 311 Food manufacturing

Food Safety & Traceability SoftwareExecution decides

binding constraint: distribution

Incumbent Trustwell (FoodLogiQ + Genesis) and TraceGains

FSMA 204 gives the category a dated regulatory trigger, which is the strongest demand signal in this batch — but the buyer is reached through GFSI certifying bodies and third-party auditors, not through search or self-serve. That channel is owned by the auditors and by the incumbents who sponsor them, and an entrant with no audit relationship has no route in. Nothing is disclosed here. Every vendor named on this record is private, or sits inside a parent that does not break the line out, so no revenue floor can be built and the market size is genuinely unknown rather than estimated.

NAICS 3114 vendors namedOpen →

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 4

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
Clearwater SeafoodsDelisted	Seafood product preparation and packaging3117	—	1/4
Cooke Inc.Private	Seafood product preparation and packaging3117	—	2/4
Barry GroupPrivate	Seafood product preparation and packaging3117	—	3/4
Ocean Choice InternationalPrivate	Seafood product preparation and packaging3117	—	4/4

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

1 row sits directly beneath 3117, and 2 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
31171	Seafood product preparation and packaging	372	screened at 3117

Alongside it, under 311 Food manufacturing

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
3111	Animal food manufacturing	434	Pet Food Manufacturing Plant
3112	Grain and oilseed milling	197	Oilseed Crushing & Flour Milling Plant
3113	Sugar and confectionery product manufacturing	330	Craft Chocolate & Confectionery Maker
3114	Fruit and vegetable preserving and specialty food manufacturing	376	Frozen & Preserved Food Processing
3115	Dairy product manufacturing	434	Dairy Processing Plant
3116	Meat product manufacturing	695	Small-Scale Meat Processing
3118	Bakeries and tortilla manufacturing	2,313	Craft Bakery Operation
3119	Other food manufacturing	1,717	Coffee Roasting & Specialty Food Manufacturing