Company expanded from shrimp nets to baseball backstops.
William H. Burbank IV, left, and his father, William H. Burbank III, show some of the netting they manufacture in a former fish-processing plant at Fernandina Beach, Fla. Burbank Trawl Makers has been in business almost a century.When commercial shrimp fishing began to tank in north Florida in the 1970s, William Burbank III could have closed up shop and walked away.
Instead, he reinvented the company his grandfather had started nearly a century ago and came up with a product that makes it safer and easier for baseball fans to watch the game they love.
“You’ve got to change. You must have the ability to change,” Burbank said.
Since 1915, Burbank Trawl Makers had been fabricating what Burbank called “the best shrimp nets in the world.” Forty years ago, American shrimp yield was slashed by federal regulations intended to prevent overfishing. At the same time, Burbank said, Japanese farm-raised shrimp began to flood American markets. It was a perfect storm that could have led to the demise of the family business.
“It was a case of diversify or die,” he said.
Burbank, now 61, came up with the idea of using shrimp nets for baseball backstops. That spawned Burbank Sport Nets, which today provides equipment to 75 percent of Major League Baseball teams and college programs such as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Boston College.
UMass uses Burbank nets in batting cages; Boston College purchased Burbank carts to collect and carry baseballs for batting practice. The Boston Red Sox area also said to be discussing using Burbank equipment at the spring-training facility in Fort Myers, Fla.
William H. Burbank IV, who uses his middle name, Hunter, is vice president of the sport-nets company. He has a degree in advertising from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, where his mates on the school baseball team included Jeremy and Joshua Papelbon, kid brothers of Jonathan Papelbon, recently of the Boston Red Sox and now of the Philadelphia Phillies.
Hunter Burbank’s office is festooned with baseball caps representing teams with which Burbank does business. A collection of photographs shows company representatives with players including baseball hall of famer Nolan Ryan, now an owner of the Texas Rangers.
Hunter Burbank, 25, has big plans for the sport-nets operation. Nets for Everything is his program to make netting and build equipment for softball, soccer, football, golf, hockey, volleyball, tennis and lacrosse. The company makes backstops, batting cages, screens that protect pitchers during batting practice, carts to hold baseballs by the bushel and “bounce-back” screens that allow a kid to play catch alone.
Backstops at most baseball diamonds are made of chain-link fence, which restricts fans’ views of the game. Burbank backstops, Hunter Burbank said, “are made of highest-grade molecular polyethylene, which is lighter, stronger and easier to see through than anything else on the market.”
Said to be 10-times stronger than steel, the fiber is also used in the production of body armor for the military and law-enforcement agencies.
The company’s first Major League installation was for the Chicago White Sox in the 1980s. Today, Burbank nets protect fans from foul balls, passed balls and wild pitches at home and training stadiums of the Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago White Sox, San Francisco Giants, Kansas City Royals, St. Louis Cardinals, Atlanta Braves and Colorado Rockies, to name a few.
Norm Roy, a retired production editor for The Republican, lives and travels in a motorhome. He is eager to hear from readers about their own travel adventures. His e-mail address is: lollygaggeratlarge@gmail.com