J. D. Irving

J. D. Irving Limited
Private
Industry
  • Forestry
  • Transportation
  • Shipbuilding
  • Consumer Products
Founded Bouctouche, New Brunswick, Canada 1882 (1882)
Founder James Dargavel Irving
Headquarters Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada
Area served
Key people
Owner J. K. Irving
Number of employees
 15,000
Parent Irving Group of Companies
Divisions Irving Forest Products & Services
Irving Transportation Services
Irving Shipbuilding & Industrial Fabrication
Irving Retail & Distribution Services
Irving Consumer Products
Irving Industrial Equipment & Construction
Irving Specialty Printing
Website www.jdirving.com
Footnotes / references
[1][2][3]
Pulp and Paper Mill owned by JDI in Saint John, New Brunswick.

J.D. Irving Limited is a privately owned conglomerate company headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Its activities include many industries: forestry, paper products, agriculture, food processing, transportation, shipbuilding. The company forms, with Irving Oil and Brunswick News, the bulk of the Irving Group of Companies, which regroups 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 Dargavel Irving.[1] J.D. Irving's operations were entrusted to his children, one of which, 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.

A Kent store in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

From the 1960s-2000s, JDI expanded to become the largest forestry concern 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:

Controversies

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."[4] 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.[5]

J.D. Irving forestry practices and influence over provincial government policy has also resulted in controversy. A forestry plan announced by the Province in 2014 had been altered at the company’s request to increase allowed cutting by 20%, to a level experts believed was unsustainable.[6] This was justified to the public with promises of jobs growth and corporate investment in silviculture infrastructure. Defending the changes, J.D. Irving co-chief executive Jim Irving blamed criticisms on environmental nay-sayers, and cited the company’s own scientific research group of six doctorates, which had worked for 15 years “on the ground”. “This is not theoretical”, he said. “This is not sitting in the office staring at the computer. This is out in the forest, doing the work on the ground, collecting the data.”[7] However, one scientist who was part of J.D. Irving Ltd's forest research advisory committee went public to counter Irving’s assertion. Marc-André Villard stated, “We have never been told about the details of this upcoming plan. We had heard about it, but only rumours. And we were not consulted whatsoever on the contents of the plan." Had he been consulted, Villard said he would have raised the same concerns he has voiced on the committee for 15 years.[8]

Many of the forest management practices at J.D. Irving have come under fire from environmentalists. While JDI has received praise from its lumber retailers and from government regulators, environmentalists point out that the company's tree farming practices have led to an unprecedented industrialization of the forests of northeastern North America, and in turn have led to a decline in tree species variety. Logging roads and erosion problems are also frequently criticized.

Divisions

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

Irving Forest Products & Services

Irving Transportation Services

Irving Shipbuilding & Fabrication Services

Irving Retail & Distribution Services

Irving Consumer Products

Industrial Equipment & Construction

Specialty Printing

Personnel Services

Security Services

Professional Sports

Brunswick News

A selection of former subsidiaries

References

  1. 1 2 "History". J.D. Irving, Limited. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
  2. ↑ "About Us". J.D. Irving, Limited. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
  3. ↑ "J.D. Irving, Limited". Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada. Retrieved 27 July 2014.
  4. ↑ "CBC: Feds must examine Irving media empire". 2007-10-12. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
  5. ↑ "The Star: Hot scoop burns reporter at Irving paper". 2009-06-17. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
  6. ↑ l "CBC: New Crown forestry plan greeted with shock, dismay" Check |url= value (help). 2014-03-13. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
  7. ↑ l "CBC: Jim Irving defends New Brunswick forest practices, expanded cut" Check |url= value (help). 2014-03-17. Retrieved 2016-03-24.
  8. ↑ l "CBC: J.D. Irving scientific adviser blindsided by new forest policy" Check |url= value (help). 2014-03-19. Retrieved 2016-03-24.

External links

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