ALBANY, Ind. — Bell Aquaculture, a fish farm in central Indiana, was ordered to pay more than $200,000 in court judgments to suppliers that claimed the company owes them money.
Daybrook Fisheries in Louisiana, which supplied fish food to Bell, won more than $211,000 from Bell Aquaculture last month in a lawsuit filed in Jay County, and a trucking company won about $3,800. In at least two cases, the companies won because Bell failed to respond to the lawsuits, reported the Muncie Star-Press.
Bell officials refused comment to Farm World about its financial concerns but deferred to a letter to the editor of the Star-Press sent by the chief executive of the Muncie-Delaware County Economic Development Alliance.
In the letter, Jay T. Julian wrote: "With any rapidly growing business, and especially one that is inventing new technology as they expand, operational challenges occur. It is accurate that Bell is working through lawsuits that are a result of a problematic feed mill acquisition."
The national leader in wholesale yellow perch, Bell asked the county in 2012 to issue $16.6 million in economic development revenue bonds. Bell instigated a $30 million expansion last year to build a fish mill and add indoor tanks for salmon and trout. With the expansion, Bell announced it would triple its annual fish output to 6 million pounds.
Bell uses state-of-the-art, indoor recirculating tanks to grow wholesale fish for restaurants and retail, located in Albany. The fish mill was planned to develop plant-based fish food that would revolutionize the industry, according to Norman McCowan, president of Bell Aquaculture.
The company’s expansion plans were not without opposition by neighbors who opposed the extra traffic and odors wafting from a manure lagoon on the property. Despite the controversy, Bell narrowly won the zoning variance it required to sell commercial fish food.
Bell reportedly had not been communicating regularly with county officials for the past few months, but that circumstance has changed. For the last several weeks, Bell executives have been talking regularly with local economic development leaders, said Terry Murphy, vice president of economic development for Muncie-Delaware County.
"This is a great team. We have confidence that Bell will work its way through this. They have 57 employees in Delaware and Jay counties and phenomenal technology. It’s the type of business any community would want," Murphy said. "We are hearing positive things taking place in the company that will lead to a lot of future growth."
In his statement, Julian said Bell is reorganizing its feed mill division. He further expressed appreciation for a company that is a global leader in containment fish production, situated in Delaware County.
He said Bell has invested $100 million in an aquatic research and development center and a state-of-the-art facility - $80 million of which has gone to local Indiana suppliers. "This is the kind of company that the 14,000-plus economic development organizations in the U.S. are aggressively trying to attract. We are fortunate to already have them in our community," Julian added. "Let’s support and celebrate them."
Murphy said county economic development leaders are presently negotiating a deal to build a $1 million road that will accommodate traffic generated by Bell’s business.
