Saving Seafood

Two More American Seafoods Factory Trawlers Hit by COVID-19

June 8, 2020 — American Seafoods Company has announced additional cases of COVID-19 aboard two more of its catcher-processor trawlers, the American Triumph and the Northern Jaeger. Testing revealed 25 positive cases between the two vessels. The ships ordinarily carry about 130 crewmembers each.

The American Triumph and Northern Jaeger are currently in port at Bellingham to offload their catch. A third vessel, the American Dynasty, had an outbreak resulting in 94 positive cases (86 at the time of her arrival in Bellingham and eight more afterwards). The Dynasty has since relocated to Seattle and her crew have moved into quarantine housing administered by King County.

“On the Northern Jaeger, one crew member reported feeling ill on-board last week and was transported to the hospital where they have tested negative for covid-19. The crew member is in the hospital recovering from their illness,” said ASC in a statement June 3.

Before the three vessels sailed in May, ASC required crewmembers to undergo a five-day quarantine period and a COVID-19 lab test. The company has since extended the pre-quarantine period to 14 days, a spokesperson told NPR.

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

Trident Seafoods’ Boss Charts Safer Course for Alaska Fishing Season

May 21, 2020 — Joe Bundrant runs one of the world’s largest seafood companies. He knows that without healthy fishermen there will be no catch in the bountiful waters off Alaska’s coast.

Mr. Bundrant, the 54-year-old chief executive of Trident Seafoods, has enforced a strict quarantine to protect people and keep business going during the critical summer fishing season. The pandemic could wreak havoc on the Last Frontier, and Mr. Bundrant wants to avoid a repeat of the 1918 pandemic that decimated Alaska’s remote communities.

“If I’m going to put 145 people on a ship, including my son, and ask them not to get off the ship for six months, this is my only choice,” Mr. Bundrant said.

The $10 million effort includes isolating hundreds of workers for two weeks before sending them to sea and remote fishing villages, their rooms monitored by quarantined guards. On day 15, if they have tested negative for the virus, they are ushered by quarantined drivers to ships or private airplanes to begin a six-month fishing season in some of the world’s most remote waters.

There are consequences for those who refuse to play along. The six workers who tried to leave quarantine were fired.

Trident is the largest U.S. seafood company, employing 5,000 during the peak fishing season in Alaska. The state’s fishing industry catches 60% of the seafood in the U.S., including salmon, cod, halibut, rock fish and herring.

The fishing industry is seasonal, presenting a challenge for a company trying to prevent the spread of a virus in an industry considered among the most hazardous in the U.S.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

America’s Fishing Industry Appeals for Help During COVID-19 Shutdown

March 26, 2020 — The leaders of America’s domestic fishing industry have appealed to the Trump administration for help with the severe economic hardship created by the coronavirus epidemic. With consumers stuck at home and restaurants closed, the $100 billion-per-year demand for U.S. fishery products has evaporated overnight, according to the coalition – putting tens of thousands of well-paid jobs at risk. The coalition is calling for about $4 billion in federal assistance to maintain the fishery supply chain until the economy is back on its feet.

“Supply chains cannot be turned on and off like a light switch. Once lost, a supply chain and the infrastructure that supports it can be exceptionally difficult and costly to restart. Failure to act boldly now to preserve our country’s domestic seafood infrastructure will impose far greater costs on our economy and cause permanent damage to our nation’s ability to harvest, farm, process, and distribute seafood products,” the group wrote.

Their request includes:

  • Sustained USDA Section 32 funding at current levels, plus $2 billion for additional Section 32 activity supporting the domestically-produced seafood supply chain. The group asks for normal federal contracting rules to be lifted for these expenditures in order to accelerate disbursement. (Section 32 supports the purchase of food commodities, including fish, using customs tariff receipts.)

Read the full story at The Maritime Executive

Another bumper year coming for seafood M&A after 2019 spend rockets past $5bn

January 15, 2020 — With deals for two massive US seafood firms set to close early this year, there’s a good chance that 2020 will be another bumper year for seafood mergers and acquisitions (M&A), after 2019 saw a surge in both deal values and quantities.

A total of $5.16 billion was spent on seafood mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in 2019, over $1bn more than 2018 ($3.86bn), according to data compiled by Undercurrent News from transactions where the sale value was revealed or could be estimated.

Last year has therefore replaced 2018 as the second-most lucrative year for seafood deals on record, behind only the $5.83bn spent in 2015, driven by the sales of aquafeed giants EWOS Group and Nutreco.

Had the sales of US megafirms American Seafoods Group (ASG) and Bumble Bee Foods been closed before the end of December, last year may even have beaten 2015’s record. ASG is reputedly valued upwards of $1.5bn, and possesses a pollock quota holding of 250,000 metric tons.

As of Nov. 12, 2019, a pollock consortium — comprised of Aleutian Spray Fisheries, Arctic Storm Management Group, Glacier Fish Company and Trident Seafoods — is the frontrunner for ASG’s business, but there still remains a possibility that Bregal Partners, the largest shareholder in the firm, chooses not to sell its stake.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

ALASKA: Trident’s Sand Point plant closed for the winter due to low cod stocks

December 23, 2019 — The precipitous drop in Gulf of Alaska cod recently closed the federal fishery for the upcoming season. Its effects are also being felt by processors who rely on the fish for their winter workload. The Trident Seafoods plant in Sand Point closed last month for the winter, leaving a gaping hole in the city’s budget, and sowing uncertainty about the future.

The city of Sand Point was founded on cod. Settled less than 150 years ago, it’s had a processing plant in some form for nearly a century. This year is the first that the plant, now owned by Trident Seafoods, won’t be processing cod — and that’s because of climate change.

“It’s no fault of the plant at Sand Point, however, there’s not enough fish to process. So for the first time in my life, it’s closed,” Paul Gronholdt, an Aleutians East Borough assembly member testified at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council meeting earlier this month. “That’s going to be pretty devastating to Sand Point and it’ll hurt the other communities in our region too.”

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

World Exporters Innovate to Feed China’s Growing Appetite for Seafood

November 4, 2019 — SEAFOOD NEWS — From Ecuadorian shrimp to Russian king crab, getting a taste of the ocean has never been easier these days for many Chinese. But for exporters trying to tap into this fast-growing seafood market, they need more than just quality products.

At the China Fisheries and Seafood Expo (CFSE), which runs from Wednesday to Friday in the eastern coastal city of Qingdao, Shandong Province, exporters around the world are bringing out their best to woo increasingly sophisticated Chinese customers.

“Chinese consumers at home may not barbecue or bake fish in the style of Americans or Europeans. Instead, they may put it into hotpot or even in steamed dishes,” said Jeff Welbourn, senior director of new business development of China for Trident Seafoods, a U.S.-based seafood company.

“We should be sensitive to the way people eat fish here and make sure we develop the products that are exciting to Chinese consumers,” he said.

To meet the demand of health-conscious Chinese consumers, the company strives to ensure product quality from source to plate, using supply chain management to win over the rapidly growing and diverse Chinese market, according to Welbourn.

As China’s middle-class population grows, more people now crave a diversified menu on their dining tables, leading to an increasing demand for high-quality seafood.

The rapid development of e-commerce added to seafood’s popularity, with companies such as JD.com and Alibaba promising to deliver fresh seafood to the doorsteps of major city households within hours.

For global exporters, China’s growing appetite for seafood means opportunities. In the first eight months of this year, China’s seafood imports surged 24.8 percent year on year in U.S. dollar terms, official data showed.

“China is such a big market that there is room for everyone,” said Roberto Coronel Kronfle, of Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila, an Ecuadorian shrimp company.

The firm is expected to see more than 70 percent of its total sales this year coming from China, Coronel said.

Santa Priscila’s booth at the CFSE neighbors several other Ecuadorian shrimp exporters, all of which were often surrounded by importers inquiring about quotations.

To win over the buyers, each firm has developed its own tactics. Jose Luis Salvador, a sales manager for Ecuadorian shrimp exporter Alimesa, said that the company’s competitive advantage lies in quality control as well as a commitment to deliver on time.

“Every client needs a certain date for shipment. That is very important now, so we have to be prepared and pack everything on time according to our selected partners’ needs. We need to comply with what was agreed,” he said.

For some companies, the key to success in China is about focusing on a niche market. Future Cuisine, a producer and exporter of premium New Zealand seafood, is targeting consumers that crave the best with its export of king salmon, a rare species of salmon.

“Now more and more Chinese travel to New Zealand and can get a taste of king salmon that they will never forget. People do taste the difference,” said Sophia Liu, general manager of the company’s China operations.

For others, the trick is about packaging. Vivian Zhang, general manager of KONO Pure NZ Trading (Shanghai), a subsidiary of Kono, a green shell mussels producer and exporter in New Zealand, said the firm designed a smaller packaging of mussels specifically for the Chinese market to cater to the demand of retail customers, who often like to buy online.

“Chinese consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. It is an opportunity that we can not afford to miss out on,” she said.

This story was originally published on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.

US government completes big wild salmon buy, seeks more pollock

August 21, 2019 — The United States government continues to support Alaska’s wild fisheries with a USD 3.1 million (EUR 2.8 million) purchase of wild salmon and a bid for nearly 400,000 pounds of Alaska pollock.

The United States Department of Agriculture awarded its most recent wild salmon contract to Trident Seafoods, for federal child nutrition and other domestic food assistance programs.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

How The Trade War With China Is Threatening America’s Largest Fishery

February 13, 2019 — Alaskan pollock is an incredibly versatile fish when it comes to cooking. The species is often referred to as a “cousin of cod” because the two species are classified in the same family, Gadidae. This means they have many shared characteristics, including how they taste. Their meat is a flaky blank slate, ready for nearly any preparation you could throw at it. Pollock’s affordability also makes it an attractive species for a variety of markets, from fast-casual to university and corporate dining.

These factors, along with the stability and health of the species’ population, helped to make Alaskan pollock the top species landed by volume in the United States in 2017. It hasn’t always been a top seller though. Back in the 1980s, there was very little demand for the species, but seafood distributors such as Trident Seafoods, based in Seattle, saw pollock’s potential as a cheaper cod alternative. Trident started a pollock revolution and became the largest vertically integrated seafood company in North America. Its founder, Chuck Bundrant, even became a billionaire, with a net worth Forbes estimates at $2.4 billion. Today, Alaskan pollock remains one of the top five most commonly eaten species in the U.S., but the fishery is at risk of being diminished by the ongoing trade war with China.

The species’ dominance could change if markets become unavailable because of shifts in global seafood processing and distribution due to an escalating international trade war. Last summer, China put in place a retaliatory tariff of 25% for seafood products. Then the U.S. proposed a 10% increase for tariffs on seafood imported from China. The issue here is that a portion of seafood caught by American fishermen is shipped to China for filleting and processing before being re-exported back in the U.S. for Americans to buy. While this seems like a wildly inefficient move, it has been, in fact, a commonly used method to cut costs. That meant when Alaskan pollock was processed in China and re-exported to America, it was included on the tariff lists.

After reports came out that the tariffs were harming the American fishing industry, particularly in Alaska, the U.S. announced that certain species of fish caught in the state would be excluded from the tariff list. Alaskan pollock is included in this group and will not be taxed when re-entering America. But the exemption doesn’t solve all problems for Alaskan fishermen and processors.

According to an FAO market report from January, Trump’s trade war “could end up favoring Russian Federation (and Chinese) exporters at the expense of Alaska processors.” This is because foreign fishing competitors can still ship pollock caught in their waters to China for lower-cost processing and then re-export to the U.S. tariff free. It seems like a bad turn of events for Alaskan fishermen and processors.

Read the full story at Forbes

 

Unalaska Considers Joining DOC Program That Employs Inmates At Fish Plants

October 1, 2018 — This winter, Unalaska’s seafood plants could host a handful of prison inmates — if the community joins a work release program run by the state Department of Corrections.

DOC Commissioner Dean Williams proposed the idea to the City Council this week, citing interest from at least one local processor that he declined to name.

Williams said he’d like to start with four or five inmates, who would go through a thorough vetting and selection process. They’d work at plants and live at bunkhouses under strict rules and electronic surveillance.

“We’re going to pick people whose behavior behind the walls has been exemplary,” he said. “People who we’ve provided training to — carpentry, HVAC, refrigeration, and welding. Companies would love to have these guys.”

In return, Williams said the inmates would find purpose, develop skills, and transition back into society. His goal is to chip away at Alaska’s high rate of recidivism.

“My department releases 12,000 sentenced people every year,” said Williams. “The problem is that 4,000 end up back in prison within the first six months, because they don’t have a job and they don’t have a place to live. You just can’t cut the cord.”

Williams said the program is already succeeding in Kenai and Cordova, where more than 20 inmates have worked at Pacific Star Seafoods and Trident Seafoods. A few were returned to prison for drug offenses, but he said most have become reliable workers.

In Unalaska, the proposal met with a mixture of open-mindedness and reservations.

City officials and residents raised concerns about how local police would be affected, whether the island has sufficient addiction and behavioral health services, and whether sex offenders would be allowed to participate.

Read the full story at KUCB

‘Weaponized’ McDowell Report on Value of Shore Processing Opening Gun in Fight Over Cod Allocations

June 15, 2018 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The newly released McDowell Report on the economic impacts of shore-based processing was requested by the processors to support their position on the cod issue at the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council.

The results of the analysis demonstrate the inshore seafood sector is the primary source of economic activity in the BSAI region and a critical source of income for the region’s communities and residents. It further illustrates the importance of a diverse portfolio of species and products in sustaining the industry’s important regional and statewide economic impacts,” according to the study.

In 2016, inshore processing paid $41 million in wages to 1,230 of the region’s residents, and over $22 million in fish and property taxes to six communities, including Unalaska, Akutan, Adak, Atka, King Cove, Saint Paul, and the Aleutians East Borough, according to the report.

Although the report has just been released, a 7-page executive summary of the weaponized document was published in February,  and distributed at an Unalaska City Council meeting by Trident Seafoods’ Chief Legal Officer Joe Plesha.  That meeting has been called a ‘side show’, with the main show now being the council meetings themselves.

The NPFMC took its first formal look at various proposals last week and is expected to spend the next two years considering a range of alternatives from the various sectors of the groundfish industry, according to Unalaska Mayor Frank Kelty, who attended the meeting in Kodiak.

The issue is based around whether the increased use of motherships to purchase cod at sea is destabilizing to the shore-side sector.  The shore-side sector wants to retain their traditional share of the cod quota in the Bering Sea.  However, in the past two years the volume of cod purchased directly from vessels by catcher-processors in the Amendment 80 fleet has increased.

The issue came to a head when the Pacific Seafood Processors blocked a congressional waiver for F/V America’s Finest owner, Fishermen’s Finest.  America’s Finest was determined by the Coast Guard to be in violation of the Jones Act because it used more than the allowable amount of foreign steel. The processors wanted any waiver to come with a prohibition on catcher processors purchasing cod as motherships.

Representatives of the Amendment 80 fleet said such a prohibition would cripple their business plans.

As a result of this opposition, Congress has twice failed to grant a waiver to America’s Finest, and the vessel is now up for sale, at a substantial loss.

The current controversy harkens back to the inshore/offshore fights over pollock between shore plants and factory trawlers in the 1990s. Those bitter allocation battles were ended by the U.S. Congress with the passage of the American Fisheries Act, which permanently divided the resource.

An acrimonious debate is again taking shape.

Frank Kelty, mayor of Unalaska and a vocal supporter of the shore-plants, was upset when Fishermen’s Finest expressed opposition to state sanctioned local fish taxes.  Kelty also faced a recall election in Unalaska, which he survived.  Now Kelty has called remarks about him by Fisherman’s Finest’s Seattle publicist, Paul Queary, “threatening”.

Although tempers can get hot, the arduous council decision making process has just started.  Like recreational halibut, bycatch management in the Gulf of Alaska trawl fishery, bycatch affecting halibut and salmon, and the proverbial inshore / offshore fight, these issues all have real economic consequences on both sides.

The job before the council will also be one of maintaining the status quo while working out the options to resolve the conflict.  Toward that end, the one decision the council made was to separate the issue of Adak’s set aside cod quota from the broader issue of mothership purchases.  The council will treat the two independently.

This year processing in Adak was sufficient to reach the threshold to use most of the set aside quota, but still there was controversy when other vessels steamed out to legitimately fish cod trips in the Western Aleutians and deliver back to Dutch Harbor.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.