Saving Seafood

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.

Trident works to bring wild Alaska seafood direct to Chinese consumers

May 30, 2018 — There’s a lot of Alaska-born seafood in China. Walk into any McDonald’s and pick up a fish sandwich and it’s all wild Alaska pollock.

Trident Seafoods has been selling fish in China for 20 years.

Still, the average Chinese consumer probably doesn’t recognize Trident’s three-pronged logo. That’s because they’ve been selling seafood primarily as a commodity in China, not in stores and markets.

But that might change soon. The company sent a team with Alaska Gov. Bill Walker’s trade mission to China and that team is working on a new strategy.

Trident isn’t new to China. They’ve got operations in the port cities of Dalian, Qingdao and Weihai.

What’s new is the way they want to promote and sell their fish here.

Jeff Welbourn is Senior Director of the Chinese Business Office for Trident Seafoods. On a bus trip across Beijing, Welbourn talks strategy for getting their products into some new markets.

Read the full story at Alaska Public Media

 

Trident settles with EPA on Clean Water Act violations

March 7, 2018 — Two federal agencies have reached a settlement with Trident Seafoods over Clean Water Act violations at Sand Point and Wrangell involving discharges of fish waste.

The agreement, announced on March 2, calls for Trident to remove nearly three and a half acres of waste from the seafloor near its Sand Point plant and limits on how much seafood waste is discharged from its Wrangell plant.

Trident also will pay a $297,000 civil penalty and do a comprehensive audit of the company’s system for monitoring environmental compliance, under the agreement reached with the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice.

The Seattle-based processor has operated a fish meal plant at Sand Point since 1996 to help limit how much fish waste is discharged into marine waters.

Yet after decades of processing, the historic waste pile exceeds the one-acre limit, and continues to impair the health of the seafloor, EPA officials said. Unauthorized discharges of seafood processing waste lead to large seafood waste piles that contain bones, shells and other organic materials that accumulate on the seafloor. Those waste piles create anoxic, or oxygen-depleted conditions that result in unsuitable habitat for fish and other living organisms.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Alaska: Bering Sea cod conflict brewing between on and offshore buyers

December 21, 2017 — “Cod Alley” is getting crowded, and some fishermen want to limit the boats in the narrow congested fishing area in the Bering Sea.

The North Pacific Fishery Management Council is looking at changes, including restricting flatfish factory trawlers from buying cod offshore.

The Pacific Seafood Processors Association is pushing for restrictions on factory trawlers to protect its members’ shore plants in Unalaska, Akutan, King Cove and Sand Point.

According to the PSPA’s Nicole Kimball, seven factory trawlers bought cod from 17 catcher boats in 2017, up from just one factory trawler that traditionally participated in prior years. The Amendment 80 factory trawlers act as motherships, processing but not catching the Pacific cod.

“The share delivered to motherships increased from 3.3 percent in 2016 to 12.7 percent in 2017, while shoreside processors had a reciprocal decline. This is a meaningful shift. At this point it is open-ended, and there is nothing to prevent future growth in this activity,” Kimball testified at the council’s December meeting in Anchorage.

Local government representatives shared the shoreplants’ concerns, citing a loss of tax revenues needed for schools and other services. On a smaller scale, it’s reminiscent of the inshore-offshore battle in the pollock fishery about 20 years ago.

“This is a big deal,” said Unalaska Mayor Frank Kelty. “It looks like we’ve got trouble coming down the road again.”

Cod is Unalaska’s second-most important product, behind pollock, he said.

Read the full story at the Alaska Journal of Commerce

 

Industry’s challenge to seafood import monitoring program rejected

August 29, 2017 — A legal challenge to the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) – a set of regulations requiring increased traceability for seafood imports – was rejected on Monday, 28 August.

The lawsuit was filed earlier this year by the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) and a large group of U.S. seafood companies, including Trident Seafoods, Fortune Fish and Gourmet, Handy Seafood, and Alfa International Seafood. The industry representatives argued that the program violated federal law and that their businesses would be harmed as a result of its implementation.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled against the plaintiffs, finding that the Commerce Department’s implementation of the program was not done inappropriately. Specifically, Mehta found that SIMP was issued under rules allowed under the Magnuson-Stevens Act and Administrative Procedure Act, and that the department properly completed a regulatory flexibility analysis to determine SIMP’s impact on small businesses.

“The court finds that the rule’s issuance did not run afoul of the MSA, and the current Secretary of Commerce validly ratified the rule, thereby curing any alleged constitutional defect in the rule’s promulgation,” Mehta wrote.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

The Man Who Got Americans to Eat Trash Fish Is Now a Billionaire

July 19, 2017 — Chuck Bundrant was a college freshman with $80 in his pocket when he drove halfway across the country to Seattle to earn a few bucks fishing. The year was 1961.

He hasn’t stopped fishing since.

And today, Bundrant, the founder and majority owner of Trident Seafoods, is worth at least $1.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth is due to a fair measure of pluck. Back in the early 1980s, he persuaded Americans to eat pollock, then considered a trash fish, at fast-food restaurants and, to this day, Trident ships it — along with salmon and cod — to chains including Costco and Safeway.

Along the way, Bundrant cultivated politicians who would pass legislation that aided Trident’s business by keeping foreign fisheries at bay. These days, Trident also is benefiting from health-conscious consumers gravitating to seafood.

The Bloomberg index calculates that Bundrant owns 51 percent of privately-held Trident, which had $2.4 billion in revenue last year, based on information compiled from trade groups. It’s valued by the Bloomberg index at about $2.1 billion, using comparisons to five publicly traded peer companies, including Clearwater Seafoods Inc. and Oceana Group Ltd. Trident operates about 16 processing plants and 41 fishing vessels — and remains defiantly independent.

“We don’t answer to investment bankers like some other seafood companies,’’ the company writes on its website. “We only answer to our customers, our fishermen, and our employees.”

Read the full story at Bloomberg