Covered Bridge Potato Chips owner says he'll rebuild N.B. plant destroyed by fire
CBC
The owner of a New Brunswick potato chip plant destroyed by fire says he plans to rebuild it in the same spot where it burned down.
Ryan Albright said he's been working with his insurance company, and while it will likely be a lengthy process, he hopes to rebuild the Covered Bridge Potato Chips manufacturing plant as soon as possible.
"We're also in full design mode, you know, trying to lay out building equipment, looking at timelines," Albright said in an interview Wednesday.
"But that'll be an evolving thing over the next days and weeks to come," he said, adding that he hopes the plant can will have increased processing capacity along with a more efficient manufacturing operation.
The plant just off the Trans-Canada Highway went up in flames Friday afternoon, and by the next day, all that was left were the charred metal remains of the building and equipment.
No one was injured, but the plant alone employed about 120 people, and benefited local truckers and farmers in western New Brunswick.
The New Brunswick fire marshal is now investigating, and a cause has not been revealed.
Albright said he's still waiting on the findings of the fire marshal's investigation but believes the fire started in the part of the plant where the potatoes are fried.
He said about 30 employees were at work when the fire started. At the time, Albright was driving to Bangor, Me., to meet his wife, a travel nurse.
About an hour into his drive, he said he received a call from an employee telling him about the fire
He turned around and drove back to the plant to find the building in flames.
"Standing there watching it was, it was pretty devastating, you know, looking at the 18 years of your adult life being gone up in smoke."
But while the manufacturing plant was destroyed, Albright said that he feels fortunate no one was injured and that other crucial parts of the business are situated in other locations.
Those include two large shipping warehouses, a raw materials warehouse and the company's head office in Saint Thomas, about 10 kilometres away.
More Alberta seniors are now eligible for a provincially funded RSV vaccine.
More than 100 workers at a steel plant in eastern Ontario are being laid off either temporarily or permanently, as a company with facilities in Quebec and Ontario cuts its workforce due to challenging market conditions — including U.S. tariffs.
A small town northwest of Thunder Bay, Ont., has become the unlikely home for hundreds of foreign workers, but many may have to leave the community they've embraced after the end of a federal program put in place to fill gaps in Canada's labour market.
There's mixed reaction in Waterloo to an injuction allowing police to detain, arrest and charge anyone who is participating in unsanctioned street parties in that city this weekend.
Diabetes Canada is excited about Prince Edward Island's new pharmacare deal with the federal government, but hopes the province will reevaluate copays on diabetes supplies, says a senior manager with the organization.
After 26 years of accommodating guests from across the world, Faith Embleton says she and her husband Ken are ready to sell their bed and breakfast.
A group of big-name companies including Google, Meta and Dow have signed a pledge to support tripling the world's nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a signal of the technology's growing resurgence in popularity.
Five years on, Toronto-area doctors and public health officials are looking back at what they've learned since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — and most agree the early experience will prove useful if the city faces another infectious disease crisis.
City staff would like Londoners to take a good look around their home and ask themselves a direct and possibly difficult question: Could everyone in your family survive at home, without leaving and with no other help, for a full 72 hours?
Liberal Leader Mark Carney will officially become Canada's next prime minister within a few hours, taking the reins as the country barrels toward a general election and continues to fend off verbal and economic attacks from U.S. President Donald Trump.
Recent cyberattacks in Newfoundland and Labrador should have been a wake up call for the federal government about the reality of an increasingly hostile world, says one cybersecurity expert.
A recent CBC News analysis found that Nova Scotia is rapidly losing some of its most affordable apartments, but housing experts say there are ways to prevent that.
Premier Susan Holt is defending her decision to not use electricity exports to Maine as leverage against U.S. tariffs, arguing the move might cause long-term pain for New Brunswickers.