Our Story
On paper, Benson Lobster was formed in 1976 by George, Ron and Joyce Benson; however its origins begin before that. Lloyd and George Benson (Ron’s grandfather and father) built open pen tidal pounds, used for storage of live lobsters, in the 1950s. They also used to ship live lobsters from the pounds by herring carriers before transport trucks were used. In 1971, a new lobster pound, the “Benson Pound” was built on the Shore Road. This pound was used for short term and long term storage from 1971 until 2012. In 1996, the “Enuf Pound” was built beside the Benson Pound by Ron and Morton (son) Benson. The Enuf Pound was also used for live lobster storage until 2012.
In 2009, Benson Lobster (owned by Morton and Susan Benson now), built a new land based holding facility (tank house). A 160,000 lbs holding facility was constructed at 250 Shore Road, just at the waters edge of the Benson and Enuf Pounds.
By 2012, the storage ability of the lobster pounds was not able to compete with the quality and mortality rates of the land base tank houses, so a second tank house was built. Over the next few years Caleb, Casey, and Colby Benson (Morton and Susan’s sons) were old enough to start working with the company full time. From 2012 to 2015 lobster catches were on the rise and the two tank houses were not enough capacity for the volume of lobsters Benson Lobster was handling. In 2015, a third tank house was constructed on the same property. This increased the storage capacity to over 500,000 lbs to where we are today. During this time Benson Lobster provided live lobster to customers in Massachusetts, Maine, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. The lobster pounds are still essential to our operation, because that is where we source our water from for the land based facilities. The pounds provide us with the ability to “suck” ocean water to our facilities 24/7.
In late 2019, Benson Lobster expanded their customer base to international customers. Due to the increased demand over the next couple years, Benson Lobster expanded their infrastructure and built a new building specifically designed for the grading and exporting of their live lobster.