J. D. Irving

J. D. Irving

J.D. Irving Limited is a privately owned conglomerate company headquartered in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Its activities include many industries: forestry, paper products, agriculture, food processing, transportation, shipbuilding. The company forms, with Irving Oil and Brunswick News, the bulk of the Irving Group of companies, which regroups the interests of the Irving family.

JDI traces its roots to a sawmill operated in Bouctouche, New Brunswick by its namesake, James Dargavel Irving. J.D. Irving's operations were entrusted to his children, one of which, Kenneth Colin Irving, assumed majority ownership and used JDI as a springboard for expanding into pulp and paper and other forestry-related businesses between the 1920s-1940s.

In the post-war years, JDI took control of pulp mills in Saint John and upstate New York, as well as sawmills throughout New Brunswick. During the 1950s, JDI took control of a shipyard in Saint John and started several trucking companies and heavy industry companies like Irving Equipment to satisfy the growing needs of the company.

From the 1960s-2000s, JDI expanded to become the largest forestry concern in the Maritimes and northern Maine and the region's largest industrial player, with extensive land holdings, tree nurseries, pulp mills (plants producing kraft pulp, supercalendered paper, tissue products, and corrugated medium), sawmills, a retail chain of home improvement stores (Kent Building Supplies), modular home construction (Kent Homes), industrial construction, wallboard manufacturing, marine towing and dredging (Atlantic Towing), prefabricated concrete (StresCon), steel fabrication (Ocean Steel), frozen food production (Cavendish Farms), fertilizer and agri-services (Cavendish Agri-Services), railways (New Brunswick Southern Railway), and manufacturing of personal care products including tissue and paper towels (Majesta and Royale) as well as diapers (Irving Personal Care).

In the 1970s and 1980s, JDI expanded into trucking with its Scot Truck subsidiary based in Debert, NS. Now called Midland Transport and based in Dieppe, NB, it is joined by sister companies Midland Courier (Dieppe), Sunbury Transport (Fredericton) and RST Industries (Saint John).

JDI is also the largest shipbuilder in Canada with ownership of shipyards in Halifax, Liverpool, Shelburne, and Georgetown.