Ameripure falls victim to spill

In business, the demise of a competitor is supposed to be a good thing. So why was Kevin Voisin so unhappy?

“For 10 years, I’ve been the vice president of marketing of Motivatit, trying to beat Ameripure,” Voisin said last week. “I’m telling you as I talked to them about their closure I had tears in my eyes. Because as much as I wanted to beat them out of the market to where they closed their doors, it shouldn’t have happened like this. It shouldn’t be like this.”

Motivatit Seafood is the Voisin family’s oyster processing business in Houma, and it’s hanging on despite the BP oil spill. Ameripure, in Franklin, is among the casualties in the oyster industry, a victim

of the oil and the diversion of freshwater into oyster growing areas – ironically, an attempt by the state to fight the oil.

A longtime rival of Motivatit, Ameripure suspended operations on June 18, laying off more than 40 people, according to co-owner John Tesvich. “We haven’t closed down for good,” a downcast Tesvich said, but only the essential office staff is aboard.

Under even the most optimistic projections, they won’t have oysters until November, he said, adding, “It’s not looking good, though, I’ll tell you that much.”

Voisin wasn’t gloating in the call to his rival. While Motivatit’s oyster beds have escaped contamination so far, the company’s future is far from certain as the BP underwater gusher continues.

But it wasn’t simply a condolence call Voisin was making either.

He was calling to see if any of Ameripure’s employees needed help.

Voisin is among a group of seafood industry leaders heading up a relief effort for laid-off seafood industry workers who, for one reason or another, are not getting help from BP: people who haven’t applied for its claims program (some lack income documentation, some have trouble filling out the applications) and people who have applied but haven’t yet received aid.

“He actually helped one of my employees immediately,” Tesvich said. “A girl that has a child with sickle-cell anemia. He was able to get her trailer rent paid, some utility bills paid.”

Business rivalries aside, the seafood industry is a tight-knit community, Voisin said. So, the new aid effort, Horizon Relief, has a built-in network to find those in need.

And the network is getting bigger. Volunteers have helped build a database of Gulf Coast seafood businesses likely to be affected by the spill. They are contacting them and seeking out employees who might otherwise be falling through the cracks of the aid effort.

“Our goal is not to duplicate efforts,” Voisin said. “If people have already gotten into the BP claims process and it’s working for them, that’s great.”

Horizon Relief can be a lifeline for others, he said.

Voisin added that he was surprised to find how far the money goes to sustain the workers. “A very small donation goes a long way in this population,” he said. “Five hundred dollars can make a family

pretty stable for a whole month.”

By the last week of June, Horizon Relief had raised about $50,000, Voisin said. National publicity about the spill and the relief effort have made fund-raising progressively easier, he said. And there are plenty of volunteers to make calls to find those in need.

Organizing the effort while he tends to company business has been a kind of therapy for Voisin as he watches friends and rivals fall victim to the spill and wonders whether the oil will eventually reach the Motivatit oyster beds.

“It lets me think about something else than the fact that that thing’s spewing more and more every day,” he said.

And it lets him hope for something he never thought he’d hope for: a rival bouncing back.

“I look forward to competing with them again,” he said of Ameripure. “I look forward to this thing coming back around.

“Because this is tragic.”