Major shellfish company gets bigger

Taylor Shellfish Farms of Shelton, Mason County, the largest shellfish company on the West Coast, has bought Fanny Bay Oyster in British Columbia for an undisclosed sum.

The deal boosts Taylor's half-shell oyster production by 20 percent to about 50 million oysters a year and adds about 15 percent to Taylor's overall sales.

Taylor will keep the Fanny Bay name for oysters cultivated in Baynes Sound, which is north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.

Over the past 30 years, Fanny Bay has built a name for its plump half-shell oysters (the term for oysters sold in the shell and often served with the top shell removed).

Taylor also farms clams, mussels, geoducks and shucked oysters. It has nearly 500 employees farming shellfish on 9,500 acres of owned and leased tideland in Washington, British Columbia and Mexico.

Taylor also has hatcheries in Washington and Hawaii, a pearl farm in Fiji and a distribution company in Hong Kong.

Over the past six years, Taylor has bought four other companies in British Columbia that will now use Fanny Bay's processing capability.

Last year, Taylor completed a $3.5 million, 22,000-square-foot processing plant at its headquarters in Shelton.

Fanny Bay's 80 longtime employees will continue working there, as will Sharon Hadden, who had owned Fanny Bay with her husband, Glenn.

The company also plans to keep a popular retail store Fanny Bay has next to the Denman Island ferry building.

"We feel like we can put some more resources into it and expand their production out there," said Bill Taylor, an owner of Taylor Shellfish.

Melissa Allison: 206-464-3312 or mallison@seattletimes.com