Cleanup of stinking fish sauce factory in Newfoundland will cost $1.74 million

Vats of fermenting fish are shown in a long-abandoned fish-sauce plant in St. Mary's, N.L., on Thursday, June 12, 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sarah Smellie

ST. JOHN’S — It will cost $1.74 million to clean up an abandoned, rotting fish sauce plant whose stench has been tormenting a rural Newfoundland community for years.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government awarded a contract last week to clean up the vats of rotting fish sauce left behind in the decaying building in St. Mary’s, N.L.

Steve Ryan, the town’s mayor, says the work should begin at the end of this month, after the nearby school lets out for the summer.

He says the smell is expected to get worse as the 110 oozing barrels of fermenting sauce are removed, and nobody wants to make the students suffer through it.

The Atlantic Seafood Sauce Company Ltd. building sits on the shoreline of the town of about 300 people, just steps from the ocean.


It first opened in 1990, but the owner abandoned it about a decade later after a series of legal battles.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 9, 2026.

Sarah Smellie, The Canadian Press