Trident Seafoods and the Aleutian Pribilof Island Community Development Association have reached an agreement in principle for joint ownership of Bering Pacific Seafoods, at False Pass, False Pass Fuel Co. and Cannon Fish Co. in Kent., Wash.
In a joint announcement in mid-November, Trident and APICDA said they share a vision that the False Pass processing facility has great potential and are committed to make it more productive and efficient, to better support and serve harvesters in the area of False Pass, Alaska.
The plan is for Trident, a multi-site operator in the Aleutian-Pribilof region, to help APICDA maximize the volume of product, focus on providing year-round employment and contribute more tax revenue to the city of False Pass.
APICDA’s False Pass plant, Bering Pacific Seafoods, processes salmon harvested from the southwest and Bristol Bay regions of Alaska. The announcement came on the heels of an Alaska Department of Fish and Game forecast of a run of 51.28 million sockeye salmon into Bristol Bay in 2018, with a harvest of 37.59 million reds in the Bay and 1.49 million fish in South Peninsula.
That’s nearly 10 million sockeyes over last year’s run forecast of 41.47 million reds.
Cannon Fish Co. is a secondary processing plant that takes fish initially processed in Alaska and produced high quality finished products for retail sale.
Trident’s investment in Canon Fish Co. will allow Cannon to better compete on a global stage with new markets and new products, said Larry Cotter, chief executive officer for APICDA, and Joe Bundrant, Trident’s chief executive officer.
Cotter cited Trident’s history of adding value to Alaska’s fishery resources, a benefit to harvesters and fishery dependent communities. “Trident’s investment offers APICDA the opportunity to focus greater resources to develop needed fishing industry infrastructure in our other Community Development Quota communities of Nelson Lagoon, Atka and St. George as we did in False Pass,” Cotter said.
“APICDA has done a remarkable job improving their opportunities for residents of the communities it represents” Bundrant said. “Trident is really proud to have been a partner with APICDA in various programs since it was formed in 1992.”
