Irving Group of Companies


The Irving Group of Companies is an informal name given to companies owned and controlled by the Irving family of New Brunswick—descendants of Canadian industrialist K.C. Irving: his sons James K., Arthur, and John, and their respective children.

Ownership structure

Many of the components of the Irving Group of Companies were established or acquired by K.C. Irving during his period of active entrepreneurship between the 1920s and the 1970s. Following his retirement to Bermuda in the 1970s, the conglomerate was operated by his three sons in much the same manner and remained relatively intact and maintained a strong vertical integration. The companies were divided into similar divisions, each controlled by one of K.C. Irving's sons and their respective children.
  • James K. Irving – ownership and responsibility for J.D. Irving, Limited and its subsidiaries. This conglomerate has interests in several industries including forestry, integrated forest products, building supplies, frozen food, transportation, shipping lines, and shipbuilding.
  • Arthur Irving - ownership and responsibility for Irving Oil and its subsidiaries. This conglomerate has ownership of its retail stores, oil refineries, oil tankers and distribution terminals and facilities.
  • John E. Irving – ownership and responsibility for Ocean Capital, which includes companies such as Commercial Properties, OSCO Construction Group, Source Atlantic and Acadia Broadcasting, Limited.

J.D. Irving, Limited

J.D. Irving, Limited is a holding company that primarily covers the Group's pulp and paper, transportation, and shipbuilding.

Agriculture and food

Forestry and forest products

JDI's Pulp & Paper Division, Sawmills and Woodlands Division includes the following forestry and forest product companies:

Irving Consumer Products

Irving Consumer Products includes several brand-name and private-label tissue products.
Irving Consumer Products operates 5 tissue manufacturing plants: 3 in Canada and 2 in the United States.

JDI Integrated Logistics

JDI Integrated Logistics is the transportation and logistics division of the company, which owns several railroad networks in Maine and New Brunswick, as well as major trucking companies.

Retail and distribution

Irving Retail Services includes several retailer services and business-to-business suppliers.

Other subsidiaries

  • Protrans Personnel Services Inc.
  • Industrial Security Inc.
  • Trans-Canada College
  • Moncton Wildcats

Former subsidiaries

Brunswick News

Until 2022, J.D. Irving owned Brunswick News, the largest newspaper publisher in New Brunswick and owner of the province's three major newspapers. On 17 February 2022 Postmedia Network announced that it was buying BNI from the Irving company.

Irving Oil, Limited

Former

Ocean Capital

Criticisms

Lack of transparency

Irving companies are private companies; as a result, there is less public information available as there would be for publicly traded corporations. This lack of transparency has led to significant criticism regarding Irving business activities.

Vertical integration

Irving companies are often criticized for their vertical integration. Examples of vertical integration within the "Irving Group of Companies" include the acquisition or formation of businesses along the entire chain of production, from the Irving refinery and its retail outlets, to the transportation subsidiaries of J.D. Irving, to various construction and engineering companies that assist in building, maintaining and expanding the conglomerate's facilities.
Further examples of vertical integration within the conglomerate include Industrial Security Ltd., the wholly owned security company that guards facilities, as well as industrial suppliers such as Thornes, Universal Sales and Commercial Equipment Ltd. which provide specialty goods and services to its companies. J.D. Irving, the sister firm to Irving Oil, is a dominant forestry company in northeastern North America, growing trees, harvesting trees and producing lumber, pulp and paper, and various enhanced value products such as glossy paper grades, tissue, and personal care products.

Provincial media monopoly

The Dominion newspaper, an independent Canadian newspaper, has criticized Irving's ownership of Brunswick News, which published most newspapers in New Brunswick, as well as the newspapers' journalistic integrity, particularly when reporting on companies controlled by the Irving family such as Irving Oil. Canadian Business magazine wrote in a profile of the Irving Group in 2008, "A Senate committee that recently probed media ownership in Canada expressed concerns about the family’s near-monopoly over the province’s print media and "the implications of a dominant media force linked to a dominant industrial base." While a Brunswick News official denied any pro-Irving bias in the papers’ coverage, the committee’s 2006 report cited other witnesses who feared that Irving journalists exercise restraint and self-edit when writing about the family — "unconscious loyalty to the parental control," as one put it."

Political patronage

In 2003, there were accusations of Irving family political patronage, notably involving Allan Rock and Claudette Bradshaw of the Liberal Party of Canada. In 2016, the National Observer released an eight-part investigation on the family called House of Irving. It looked at many parts of the businesses including the expansion into Maine, its media monopoly, how they intimidate their critics and issues within the family.

Ecological degradation

Irving-owned facilities have been shown to emit a mixture of carcinogens, including benzene and lead. In 2009, the Conservation Council of New Brunswick produced a study which found that rates of lung cancer were 40 to 50 percent higher in Saint John than in Fredericton and Moncton – New Brunswick’s other major cities. In 2018 the Irving Pulp and Paper Ltd. pleaded guilty to three charges under the federal Fisheries Act related to numerous "significant" instances of effluent discharges from its pulp mill in west Saint John into the St. John River over a two-year period. This was the fourth time that this fine was issued in a period of two years.