Page 11 · Team and advisory
North 49 Shrimp Co. is staffing a five-person Phase 1 operating team in Langley — a Farm Manager and four full-time Aquaculture Technicians — alongside an outsourced bench of food-safety, accounting, legal, and engineering specialists. Every hire is qualified to scale into the Phase 2 twenty-four-and-a-half one-hundred-box configuration without retraining for the original boxes they joined to run.
The five-FTE Phase 1 spec sits in deliberate contrast to the failed playbook: lean processing automation from Day 1, cross-training at every role, and a single Farm Manager carrying the credential and crisis-management authority. Labour was named the number-one cost in the Berezan post-mortem; this team is sized to answer that, not to grow into it.
Phase 1 in-house team
One Farm Manager and four full-time Aquaculture Technicians
Year 2 loaded payroll
Loaded run-rate including statutory and voluntary benefits
Technician wage band
Above the BC aquaculture ZipRecruiter baseline of $15–19 per hour
Atarraya operator training
Indianapolis facility, fully expensed, every operator credentialed
Five in-house running twenty . One Farm Manager and four Aquaculture Technicians, with a Lead Tech as deputy. Outsourced functions sit around the edges — food safety, counsel, engineering, accounting — and are listed below the chart.
Founder and Board
Three directors at Phase 1
Farm Manager
1.0 FTE · M-2 (sixty days before first stocking)
Lead Aquaculture Technician
1.0 FTE · M-1 (thirty days before first stocking)
Aquaculture Technician I
1.0 FTE · Rotation A · M-1
Aquaculture Technician I
1.0 FTE · Rotation B · M+2
Aquaculture Technician II
1.0 FTE · Water-Quality and Harvest cross-trained · M+3
1.0
1.0
1.0 · Rotation A
1.0 · Rotation B
1.0 · Water-Quality and Harvest cross-trained
Five strategic seats engage at Phase 1, with two further Phase 2 seats opening as the operation scales. Each seat is governed by a Master Advisory Engagement Letter drafted by BC corporate counsel: non-disclosure, intellectual-property assignment of advisory inputs, twelve-month non-compete, conflict disclosures, and at two years monthly with a three-month . No named individuals are published until each engagement letter is finalised.
Seat 1 · TBA
University of British Columbia or Vancouver Island University senior researcher, or a DFO Pacific scientist with biofloc and recirculating-aquaculture credentials.
Seat 2 · TBA
Sirocco-class seafood food-safety consultancy lead with PCQI and BRCGS Issue 9 audit history. Conflict bar against current Costco vendor portfolios.
Seat 3 · TBA
Former Costco buyer (Ottawa Frozen or category lead) with private-label and small-supplier program experience. Not a current BC regional employee. Explicit Costco-confidentiality carve-out.
Seat 4 · TBA
Farm Credit Canada Aquaculture relationship lead, AAFC officer, or a private aquaculture-finance veteran. Bank-relationship-conflict disclosure if North 49 becomes a borrower.
Seat 5 · TBA
Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, or Tsawwassen representative, or an Aboriginal Aquaculture Association director. Indigenous data-sovereignty and cultural-IP clauses; comp may be paid as revenue share in lieu of cash and equity.
Seat 6 · Phase 2 · TBA
Former Cermaq, Mowi, or Grieg land-based RAS director with operational scale credentials. Opens at Phase 2 ramp.
Seat 7 · Phase 2 · TBA
Innovasea, The Yield, or equivalent aquaculture-IoT background. Atarraya-cloud-dependency reducer. Atarraya-confidentiality carve-out preserved.
Functions that do not need a full-time head are contracted to specialist firms. Each line item below is sized for Year 1 unless otherwise noted; the food-safety, counsel, and engineering engagements concentrate spend in the first twelve months around build, permitting, and certification.
| Function | Provider profile | Engagement | Indicative spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food-safety consultant | Sirocco-class BC seafood consultancy with PCQI, HACCP, BRCGS, and CFIA SFCR Preventive Control Plan authoring experience | Project build plus monthly retainer | $40,000 – $60,000 in Year 1, then $20,000 – $30,000 per year |
| BC corporate counsel | British Columbia business-law firm with food-industry and BCBCA-Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation track record | Hourly plus project work for Shareholders Agreement, lease, and licence | $30,000 – $60,000 in Year 1, then $10,000 – $20,000 per year |
| US trademark counsel | US trademark counsel with USPTO Class 29, 31, and 40 filing experience | Project — filing through registration | $5,000 – $12,000 across Year 1 filing window |
| Canadian-US tax counsel | Cross-border tax specialist with CCPC structuring and US foreign-source-income experience | Annual review plus on-demand opinions | $8,000 – $20,000 per year |
| BC mechanical engineer | BC-registered Professional Engineer with industrial heat-load and electrical-load study experience | One-time project before letter-of-intent on the site | $8,000 – $15,000 |
| Wastewater Professional Engineer | BC Professional Engineer with Municipal Wastewater Regulation application experience | Six to eighteen month project — the longest single permit critical path | $80,000 – $250,000 |
| Specialty insurance broker | BFL Canada or HUB International specialty practice with aquaculture and food-processing risk experience | Annual policy placement and renewal | $30,000 – $60,000 per year placement, premium separate |
| Bookkeeper | Local BC bookkeeper operating on cloud Xero or QuickBooks Online with GST and PST filing experience | Monthly retainer | $5,000 – $7,000 per year |
| Accountant and CPA | BC food-industry CPA with corporate T2, SR&ED, and grant-compliance experience | Annual review or audit engagement | $15,000 – $25,000 per year |
| Payroll provider | Wagepoint, Payworks, Ceridian, or ADP Canada — Wagepoint recommended for five-FTE simplicity, Payworks for richer Record of Employment and T4 automation | Per-pay-run plus per-employee fee | $1,500 – $3,000 per year at the Phase 1 head count |
| WorkSafeBC OHS auditor | Independent occupational-health-and-safety consultant with processing-automation review credentials | Project — initial program build and annual review | $5,000 – $8,000 |
We pay above the BC aquaculture entry band because the BC aquaculture talent pool is small and the work is technical and round-the-clock. We expect our team to share in the upside through equity and performance bonuses tied to yield, water-quality compliance, and safety. We expect zero compromise on biosecurity, food safety, and worker safety in return.
A BC aquaculture talent pool that fits Pacific White Shrimp operations is small. Our mitigation is a multi-source recruitment funnel, paid co-op pipeline development, and a credentialing stack that hardens every hire against bus-factor risk.
Active partner
Four-week intensive operator program at the Indianapolis training facility, covering Shrimpbox hardware, water chemistry, AI dashboard, postlarvae stocking, harvest, sanitation, biosecurity, and emergency response. Every Phase 1 hire is credentialed before first stocking.
MOU pending
Paid co-op pipeline targeting four-month placements, two students per cycle, employer-paid stipend plus commute support. Memorandum of Understanding under negotiation; signing target Day plus sixty.
Recruitment channel
Adjacent-skillset recruitment channel into Aquaculture Technician I roles. Approximately forty graduates per year; cheapest large-funnel local source.
Recruitment channel
Small but high-credibility cohort in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Target pool for the Lead Aquaculture Technician and Aquaculture Technician II hybrid roles.
Recruitment channel
Apprenticeship streams plus Coast Salish Nation labour partnerships in the Langley corridor (Kwantlen, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen). Aligns with the Indigenous advisory seat.
Active partner
Preventive Controls Qualified Individual certification for the Farm Manager and the Aquaculture Technician II hybrid. HACCP Foundations for the Farm Manager, Lead Technician, and outsourced food-safety liaison.
Active partner
WorkSafeBC young-worker and new-worker safety orientation under OHS Regulation Part 3.23, mandatory on Day 1 of each hire. FoodSafe Level 1 for all hands at M-1.
Five hires staged across M-2 through M+3, then a four-year operating window before the Phase 2 ramp to twenty-four-and-a-half . Phase 2 expansion is gated against five criteria; see Roadmap.
M-2
Critical-path hire. Sole Preventive Controls Qualified Individual for the Safe Food for Canadians Licence. Recruited through the Phase 1 advisory channels and BC aquaculture network.
M-1
Both operators travel to Indianapolis for the four-week Atarraya training. Their return marks the start of the on-site commissioning window.
Day 0 (M0)
Twenty Atarraya boxes receiving postlarvae from a CFIA-cleared source. Four-person team running the first cycle.
M+2
Second technician opens the on-call rotation pair. Cross-training matrix populated to at least two per cell by M+5.
M+3
Water-Quality and Harvest cross-trained hybrid replaces the WQ 0.5 plus Harvest 1.5 split from the original module. Holds Preventive Controls Qualified Individual credential alongside the Farm Manager.
Year 4
Scale to twenty-four-and-a-half full-time-equivalent hires (one hundred boxes), subject to all five Phase 2 gating criteria being met.
We are actively recruiting in Langley, Abbotsford, and Surrey, and engaging candidates for the Phase 1 advisory seats. Five advisor profiles are open, including the Indigenous partnerships seat, and Phase 1 technical roles open from M-2 through M+3.
We are an equal-opportunity employer and welcome applications from Indigenous applicants, women, and members of visible minorities. Disability-related accommodation provided to the point of undue hardship in accordance with the BC Human Rights Code.