At the back of an old fish-processing plant in San Pedro, a heavy metal door that should open to reveal a waterfront view is shut tight, locked with a rusty bolt that won’t budge.

So Chris Iorillo, a cup of 7-Eleven coffee in hand, grabs a nearby hammer and pounds the bolt until the door opens.

It’s not the kind of hands-on work Iorillo and partners Stephen Rossi and Eric Willis imagined when they formed their own private equity firm a few years ago. And it’s a stark contrast from the work they used to do at the Beverly Hills offices of Platinum Equity.

But it’s also far from the strangest thing they’ve encountered as they’ve cobbled together a small empire of little seafood companies that stretches from San Diego to Washington state.

“We go to meetings and get cans of anchovies,” Willis said. “It’s never boring.”

Since Iorillo, Rossi and Willis co-founded downtown L.A.’s CounterPoint Capital Partners in 2010, they’ve bought eight fish processing or packing companies and a fleet of fishing boats. They’ve come home reeking of fish. They’ve done business with a San Pedro captain nicknamed “the squid whisperer” because he brings back bigger catches than competitors. They’ve tried to figure out how to freeze the calamari so that it remains photogenic because Chinese wholesalers like to see pictures of the goods before they buy.

Fishing businesses don’t attract a lot of private equity money; companies are still mostly family-owned, which is why CounterPoint’s co-founders think it’s a good place to invest.

“It’s this fragmented industry of undercapitalized guys,” Rossi said.

Their first acquisition was Tomich Bros., a San Pedro company that processes and wholesales squid, mackerel and sardines. The 75-year-old company was owned by the Tomich family for three generations, and its age was showing.

“All the processing lines were jury-rigged. They didn’t have enough forklifts. The suppliers were treated poorly,” Iorillo said.

Those problems, though, were just what CounterPoint wanted.

“We were looking for businesses that had operational stuff we could improve and that we could get in at a fair price,” he said. “You come in and say, ‘If we just don’t screw this up, it’s phenomenal.’”

Tomich and another San Pedro wholesaler, Standard Seafood, were acquired in August 2011.

To get started, Rossi and Willis left Platinum. Iorillo had left in 2008, and gave up his subsequent job investing the fortune of Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the wealthiest man in Los Angeles.

They met at a Westwood deli to talk about starting their own firm because they wanted a more fulfilling career path.

“We were all excited about doing something on our own, our own way,” Iorillo said. “We realized if we didn’t do it now, we knew what life was going to look like in 10 years.”

They figured they had enough savings to run the business for 18 months and find a deal. One potential acquisition fell apart early on, and had the Tomich deal failed, they might have had to find other work.

“It was a stressful time,” Iorillo said. “We quit with no income, no fund and two of us had babies.”

But they found a few deals and lined up financing from Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue Capital Partners, a firm that provides capital to fundless private equity firms.

Two years and eight deals later, they say they’re on course and they’re looking for more acquisitions in the fishing industry, having recently traveled to Nova Scotia to look at their first Atlantic Coast deal. They’ve also done deals outside the seafood business, buying two companies that sell printer parts.

Iorillo, Rossi and Willis say what they learned at Platinum has been vital in getting them through their first few deals.

“At Platinum, there was a strong ethic of relentlessly pursuing a deal,” Iorillo said. “You were always asking, ‘What else can I be doing? What else should I be thinking about?’ That’s something I didn’t have before Platinum.”