EASTPORT – A Canadian company announced Tuesday it will invest $60 million in stocking salmon in Maine waters over the next 18 months, creating jobs for the aquaculture industry, which has floundered over the past few years.

Gov. John Baldacci was at the Washington County Community College’s Marine Trades Center on Tuesday, where Cooke Aquaculture of St. George and Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, made the announcement. The company’s local operation is at Estes Head in Eastport. It owns several aquaculture facilities in Maine.

“And next year we plan on increasing that with more fish and hopefully a [processing] plant,” Cooke’s Aquaculture chief executive officer Glenn Cooke said Tuesday. Cooke is the co-founder of the Canadian company, which was founded 20 years ago.

Cooke did not speculate on how much it would cost to reopen a processing plant in Washington County. “We still are trying to figure out exactly what building and where these fish will be processed. We also have a plant in Machiasport as well as Eastport. You’re talking a few million dollars of total investment to get that where it needs to be,” he said after the luncheon.

The family-owned and operated company employs 1,000 people in Canada and the U.S., with 80 of those workers in Maine. The number of Maine employees is expected to increase by an unknown number because of the investment. The company’s philosophy is control of the entire fish process from “egg to plate.”

During the luncheon, Cooke praised the governor for his support in fighting off a threat by Norwegian salmon companies who had their eye on American markets. “So we have another five years without Norway bothering us in the U.S. markets,” Cooke said.

Baldacci praised the company. “This company was named one of the top 50 best managed companies in Canada. This company is committed to the resource and to this region and to the state of Maine,” he said. “We couldn’t have a better partnership.”

The governor also praised Cooke for announcing plans to open a Washington County plant. “They’re looking for a place to make an increase in investment and to add volume to their industry,” he said.

State Sen. Kevin Raye, R-Perry, and Rep. Howard McFadden, R-Dennysville, who attended the luncheon Tuesday, also praised the company. “We are seeing an industry that is picking itself up by the bootstraps, and I think there’s great potential for restoring a processing facility here in Washington County and bringing some of those jobs back,” Raye said before the start of the luncheon.

“I see today’s meeting,” Eastport City Manager George “Bud” Finch added later, “as an important step in the revitalization of the aquaculture industry in Maine, one which we in Eastport hope to play an important role in.”

Cooke has acquired several assets in Maine over the past few years.

In December 2005, it closed on a deal to buy Marine Harvest that included the assets of Stolt Sea Farms, which merged with Marine Harvest in the summer of 2005. Both Stolt Sea Farms and Marine Harvest had several farming operations on Cobscook Bay.

In an April 2004 deal with Atlantic Salmon of Maine, Cooke acquired aquaculture lease operations, a Machiasport processing plant, and hatcheries in Solon and the Rangeley village of Oquossoc. In July 2005, it purchased the eastern Canadian and Maine operations of Heritage Salmon. Since acquiring Atlantic Salmon of Maine, the company has invested $25 million in the state.

“The company has revitalized the Oquossoc hatchery, which was slated for closure, into a fully functioning hatchery and recently acquired the necessary environmental permits to continue operating the former Heritage Salmon Gardiner Lake hatchery [in Washington County],” the company said in its fact sheet. “It has also invested in and intends to maintain the Bingham hatchery, which was acquired from Marine Harvest in 2005.”

It is the only company currently farming salmon in the state, spokeswoman Nell Halse said Tuesday.

By the fall, the company will have introduced more than 3 million smolt into its Maine salmon farms. It currently has 10 operational sites stocked with salmon in the Eastport and Machiasport areas.

“[The company] is also exploring opportunities for new marine sites and other investment opportunities that will complement its existing operations, such as cod farming and multitrophic aquaculture projects that are already taking place in New Brunswick,” the fact sheet said.

The announcement Tuesday is on the heels of a bad couple of years for the industry. A few years ago, a deadly disease, infectious salmon anemia, made its way south from Canada. Millions of pounds of salmon were slaughtered to try to stop the spread of ISA.