J. D. Irving


J.D. Irving, Limited is a privately owned conglomerate company headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. It is involved in many industries including forestry, forestry products, agriculture, food processing, transportation, and shipbuilding. The 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 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-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, sawmills, a retail chain of home improvement stores, modular home construction, industrial construction, wallboard manufacturing, marine towing and dredging, prefabricated concrete, steel fabrication, frozen food production, fertilizer and agri-services, railways, and manufacturing of personal care products including tissue and paper towels as well as diapers.
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, Sunbury Transport and RST Industries.
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:
J.D. Irving’s ownership of most major media outlets in New Brunswick has led to ongoing concern regarding control of the media. A report from the Canadian Senate in 2006 on media control in Canada singled out New Brunswick because of the Irving companies' ownership of all English-language daily newspapers in the province, including the Telegraph-Journal. Senator Joan Fraser, author of the Senate report, stated, "We didn't find anywhere else in the developed world a situation like the situation in New Brunswick." The report went further, stating, "the Irvings' corporate interests form an industrial-media complex that dominates the province" to a degree "unique in developed countries." At the Senate hearing, journalists and academics cited Irving newspapers' lack of critical reporting on the family's influential businesses.

Divisions

The following is a list of divisions of J.D. Irving, Ltd.

Irving Forest Products & Services

East Isle Shipyard is a shipbuilding facility in Georgetown, Prince Edward Island and owned Irving. The small shipyard is located on Water Street with single slipway along Georgetown Harbour. It is the sole shipbuilding facility in the province.
It was founded as Bathurst Marine in Bathurst, New Brunswick in 1961 before moving to Georgetown in 1965. The facility has operated in various names but with current name since the 1990s.
The yard built trawlers in the 1960s, the diversified in the 1970s before it began to specialize in tugs in the 1990s.
In 2010 the shipyard laid off staff due to lack of orders.
Notable ships built here include: