J.D. Irving Limited (JDI) is a privately owned conglomerate company headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. It is a subsidiary of the parent company, Irving Group of Companies, along with Irving Oil Refinery, Canaport, Irving Tissue Irving Equipment, Kent Building Supplies, New Brunswick Railway, New Brunswick Southern Railway, Eastern Maine Railway, Maine Northern Railway, Brunswick News, Acadia Broadcasting, Irving Shipbuilding, Cavendish Farms. It is involved in many industries including forestry, forestry products, agriculture, food processing, transportation, and shipbuilding. JDI company forms, with Irving Oil, Ocean Capital Investments and Brunswick News, the bulk of the Irving Group of Companies, which groups the interests of the Irving family.
History
J.D. Irving Limited (JDI) traces its roots to a sawmill operated in Bouctouche, New Brunswick by its namesake, James Dergavel Irving. J.D. Irving's operations were entrusted to his children, one of whom, Kenneth Colin Irving, assumed majority ownership and used JDI as a springboard for expanding into pulp and paper and other forestry-related businesses between the 1920s and 1940s.
In the post-war years, JDI took control of pulp mills in Saint John and upstate New York, as well as sawmills throughout New Brunswick. During the 1950s, JDI took control of a shipyard in Saint John and started several trucking companies and heavy industry companies like Irving Equipment to satisfy the growing needs of the company.
From the 1960s-2000s, JDI expanded to become the largest forestry company in the Maritimes and northern Maine and the region's largest industrial player, with extensive land holdings, tree nurseries, pulp mills (plants producing kraft pulp, supercalendered paper, tissue products, and corrugated medium), sawmills, a retail chain of home improvement stores (Kent Building Supplies), modular home construction (Kent Homes), industrial construction, wallboard manufacturing, marine towing and dredging (Atlantic Towing), prefabricated concrete (StresCon), steel fabrication (Ocean Steel), frozen food production (Cavendish Farms), fertilizer and agri-services (Cavendish Agri-Services), railways (New Brunswick Southern Railway), and manufacturing of personal care products including tissue and paper towels (Majesta and Royale) as well as diapers (Irving Personal Care).
In the 1970s and 1980s, JDI expanded into trucking with its Scot Truck subsidiary based in Debert, NS. Now called Midland Transport and based in Dieppe, NB, it is joined by sister companies Midland Courier (Dieppe), Sunbury Transport (Fredericton) and RST Industries (Saint John).
JDI is also the largest shipbuilder in Canada with ownership of shipyards in Halifax, Liverpool, Shelburne, and Georgetown.
Incidents
As a large regional industrial conglomerate, J.D. Irving Ltd. subsidiaries have been the focus of several notable incidents: In 1970, an oil barge named Irving Whale sank in the Gulf of St. Lawrence causing periodic oil spills until it was raised by the federal government in 1996. In 2007, the Irving Pulp & Paper Ltd. mill at Reversing Falls accidentally released 680,000 litres of green liquid into the Saint John River; pleading guilty, the company received a fine of $50,000. In November 2008, Environment Canada investigators exercised a search warrant at Irving Pulp & Paper's head office to seek more information on this accidental spill. In November 2008, JDI Logistics and Atlantic Towing made the news over an accident involving the transport of 2 new turbines from Saint John Harbour to the nearby Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station. The JDI subsidiaries had been sub-contracted by Siemens AG, Turbine Replacement sub-contractor for the facility's owner NB Power. The 2 turbines were manufactured by Siemens AG in Scotland and were shipped to Saint John on a road transport vehicle aboard a cargo ship. The cargo was off-loaded from the ship onto a barge owned by Atlantic Towing Ltd., however the cargo shifted and the barge tipped, sending the turbines and the road transport vehicle into Saint John Harbour. In late November 2008, the Atlantic Towing Ltd. dredging barge Shovel Master was being towed by the company's tugboat Atlantic Larch from Saint John to Halifax for a refit when it foundered in heavy seas west of Yarmouth, NS. The barge crew of 3 was rescued by a CH-149 Cormorant search and rescue helicopter before the barge capsized. Several ATL tugboats and commercial divers responded and a tow line was secured to the capsized, yet floating, barge by the tugboat Atlantic Oak. The barge was towed south of Yarmouth however it sank in , carrying of diesel fuel, as well as of hydraulic fluid and of waste oil.