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Sitka-based Silver Bay Seafoods has reached a deal to acquire a 50% stake in OBI Seafoods, expanding the company’s processing capacity in Alaska. The company announced March 19 that it will take over management of all OBI facilities and operations including plants in Southeast, Southcentral and western Alaska, and Washington state. Silver Bay is buying Icicle Seafoods’ 50% stake in OBI, partnering with the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. (BBEDC) which holds the other 50%. OBI was created in 2020 by a merger between Ocean Beauty Sea...
The borough assembly on Feb. 11 appointed Phillip Mach and Antonio Silva to fill vacancies on the assembly and port commission, respectively. Both terms will expire in October, when Mach and Silva will have the option to run in the municipal elections. Anne Morrison (assembly) and Gary Morrison (port commission) vacated the seats in January after announcing they plan on leaving town. Candidates needed to submit a letter of interest to City Hall to be eligible for the appointments. While Borough...
The average hourly wage in Alaska was $33.60 in 2023, putting the state in 11th place among all 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Alaska Department of Labor. The median hourly wage — which is calculated in a way that reduces the influence of the highest and lowest numbers — was $26.99. Alaska has been among the top states for wages since the oil pipeline boom almost 50 years ago, and was No. 1 as recently as 2013, but has been falling and was eighth in 2022. Wage and job statistics were detailed in a pair of articles by...
State officials and industry leaders trying to rescue the ailing Alaska seafood industry are facing daunting challenges, recently released numbers show. The industry lost $1.8 billion last year, the result of low prices, closed harvests and other problems, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Direct employment of harvesters last year fell by 8% to the lowest level since 2001, when counts of harvesting jobs began, the Alaska Department of Labor said. The monthly... Full story
Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) officials hear that processors have mostly cleared out their overflowing inventories of Alaska salmon from the 2022 and 2023 seasons, but the problem remains that Americans don’t buy enough seafood to sustain consistently profitable sales, particularly in years of strong salmon runs. And while last year’s problem was an oversupplied market, which pushed prices paid to fishermen to as low as 20 cents a pound for pink and chum salmon, this year’s harvest may come up short of a robust supply, Greg Smith...
The borough wants a data center to plug into Wrangell. Better yet, it could even move into the unused formal hospital property. Data centers are large hosting sites for multiple servers that provide computing power and storage for cloud-based service providers. While at Southeast Conference, held in Ketchikan last month, borough representatives spoke with Sam Enoka, founder and CEO of Greensparc — a San Francisco-based technology company that specializes in setting up modular, small-scale data centers for cloud computing. Enoka grew up a...
T.J. Sgwaayaans Young, a Haida master carver from Hydaburg, arrived in Wrangell earlier this month to lead a team of Wrangell-based apprentices to carve a new Kadashan totem pole. When the work is finished, the Wrangell Cooperative Association plans to hold a pole raising ceremony on Shakes Island sometime next year, Wrangell's first totem raising in 38 years. The Kadashan pole - referring to the Tlingit chief of the same name - is the first of two the WCA team will carve this year. Next month,...
Trident Seafoods’ plan for its Wrangell plant this summer “is to run hard,” with as many as 180 workers on the processing lines, packing headed-and-gutted pinks and chum salmon for the fresh-frozen market. “You’ve got to get them out of the water and into the freezer” to have the best fish for consumers, said Jeff Welbourn, senior vice president of Alaska operations. It’s all about time and temperature, he said of producing a quality product. The company has added a new fish oil plant to its Wrangell operations for this summer, he said. “We...
Consumers think of seafood as a premium purchase, which is not a good image when household budgets are tight and shoppers are worried about inflation. “The problem is not the fish,” said Jeremy Woodrow, executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute. “The challenge is in the global marketplace.” Woodrow in February called the 2023 market for Alaska salmon “rock bottom” with low prices and weak demand, though maybe the industry was coming off that rocky bottom, he said then. Now, as the season is getting underway this summer, “a lo...
Southeast commercial purse seine fishermen are preparing for a summer season with no confidence they will earn a good price for the pink and chum they catch. The Southeast seine fishery opened with a one-day pink salmon fishing opportunity on Sunday in areas near Sitka, with more widespread openings to come. The Department of Fish and Game has forecast a “traditional” fishery harvest of 19.2 million pink salmon by commercial seiners this year, not counting the fish netted in terminal harvest areas near hatchery release sites. That would be an...
We have a great opportunity before us. Let’s change our visitors’ first impression of Wrangell. Currently, the view is of old containers piled high. Not only do they block the visitors’ view of the downtown area, but the vans are surrounded with muddy water, which is very unattractive. I don’t believe the current container location fits in with the welcome intended by the community, evident by the children selling garnets and other trinkets on the pier. The borough has been successful in acquiring the former 6-Mile mill site. This location has...
A full-fledged embargo of Russia-sourced seafood took effect in the United States on May 22, with importers prohibited from buying Russian products, even if they were processed in another country. The next day, a delegation of Alaska businessmen and local government officials, all with ties to the fishing industry, met with Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo and other federal officials in an attempt to expand that boycott internationally. “Russia is the No. 1 problem when it comes to our fishing industry,” said Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, who... Full story
The fishing fleet in the Southwest Alaska town of King Cove would have been harvesting Pacific cod this winter. But they didn't: Skippers had nowhere to sell their catch. The enormous plant that usually buys and processes their fish never opened for the winter season. The company that runs the plant, Peter Pan Seafoods, is facing six-figure legal claims from fishermen who say they haven't been paid for catches they delivered months ago. King Cove's city administrator says the company is behind... Full story
Trident Seafoods has announced the sale of its Ketchikan processing facilities to Silver Bay Seafoods, and the sale of its Petersburg operation to E.C. Phillips & Son. Trident has not announced buyers for two other Alaska plants it has put on the market in Kodiak, the company’s largest operation in the state, and False Pass, in the Aleutian Islands. Seattle-based Trident is scaling back its Alaska operations amid weak seafood markets, low prices and changing consumer buying habits. The company has called it “a comprehensive, strategic res...
With the loss of several cruise ship stops this summer, Wrangell may not exceed last year’s cruise visitor count as had been originally projected. Wrangell recently lost 14 stops from the cruise line American Queen Voyages, which filed for bankruptcy last month, canceling its 186-passenger Ocean Victory to Southeast Alaska. This translates to a loss of $33,000 in port fees and as many as 2,600 summer visitors for Wrangell. The town also lost the stops of three mid-size cruise ships which are now going to Klawock, taking about 2,200 berths o...
Trident Seafoods reported last week it was “entering the final stages of closing deals for three of its Alaska shoreside plants,” including its operations in Ketchikan and Petersburg. The Seattle-based company — the largest seafood harvesting and processing company in the United States — announced in December it planned to sell four of its Alaska plants as it restructures its operations amid weak markets. In addition to Petersburg and Ketchikan, Trident said it wanted to sell its processing operations in Kodiak and at False Pass in the Aleutia...
After a scaled-back reopening last summer following a three-year closure of its Wrangell processing facilities, Trident Seafoods anticipates having 200 to 240 workers on the job during the peak salmon months this summer. That would be about double the 100 to 120 workers at the shoreside facility last summer. “Trident is looking forward to operating its Wrangell plant again this year. We anticipate employing 200 to 240 people at peak this summer. The company will focus on processing pink and chum salmon starting in mid-June,” Alexis Telfer, vic...
It’s a good time to take a break from distressing international conflicts and too many deaths, depressing national politics of too much dishonesty and too little compromise, and the difficult state politics of short-funded schools and public services. The bad news will still be there next week. Meanwhile, for Wrangell, there is some good news to acknowledge. The borough has organized a public information fair of lenders, financial advisers, builders, zoning and utility officials to help people who are interested in buying one of the 20 s...
A Pacific Northwest seafood business owner, whose family has been active in commercial fishing in Alaska since 1981, plans to buy and expand the operations of Fathom Seafoods in Wrangell. Peninsula Seafoods has applied to the borough for transfer of the lease on a small dockside parcel at the Marine Service Center. The port commission has recommended approval of the transfer, sending the issue to the borough assembly. As soon as the assembly signs off on the transfer, which could come at its Jan. 23 meeting, Jeff Grannum, general manager of Pen...
In a major hit to Southwest Alaska’s fishing industry, Peter Pan Seafood will keep its huge plant in the village of King Cove shuttered this winter, meaning that the company won’t be processing millions of dollars worth of cod, pollock, crab, salmon and halibut. “It's one of the most difficult days of my life,” Rodger May, one of the company’s owners and a longtime player in the seafood industry, said in a brief interview Thursday, Jan. 11 “It's just a devastating time for the industry.” The closure is the latest sign of the widening turm... Full story
Russian-caught pollock, cod, salmon and crab that is processed in China will no longer be legally allowed in U.S. markets, under an executive order issued Dec. 22 by President Joe Biden. The action seeks to close a loophole that the Russian seafood industry was able to use to skirt import sanctions put in place in 2022 in response to the invasion of Ukraine. The ban is now extended to any seafood caught in Russian waters or by Russian-flagged vessels, regardless whether the seafood has been “incorporated or substantially transformed into o... Full story
Seattle-based Trident Seafoods will scale back its operations in an economically challenging global market and wants to sell several of its facilities in Alaska, including processing plants in Petersburg and Ketchikan, but the company plans to keep its Wrangell operation. "Wrangell is a highly efficient plant that makes products that feed our value-added salmon operations," Alexis Telfer, vice president for global communications at Trident, reported in an email Dec. 12. "Petersburg is a...
Even though Trident Seafoods reopened its Wrangell plant this summer after a three-year closure, many in town were nervous about the long-term prospects. Salmon prices were miserably low due to an oversupplied market from last year and foreign competition. Worrying is part of human nature. But the half-century-old, family-owned seafood processor had some good news for Wrangell last week: Trident’s plan to operate the plant is “solid” for next year. And even though the company is looking to sell its facilities in Ketchikan and Petersburg as it...
After recent years of record or near-record runs and harvests, Bristol Bay sockeye salmon numbers are expected to return to more average levels next year, according to state biologists. The 2024 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run is expected to total 39 million fish, with a predicted range between about 25 million and 53 million fish, according to a preliminary forecast released Nov. 3 by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. That is 35% lower than the average over the past 10 years but 6% higher than the long-term average for Bristol Bay, the... Full story
Trident Seafoods’ skilled-trades program was founded to address “the graying of the trades” — the shoreside counterpart to “the graying of the fleet.” The four-year course helps young people start careers in welding, electrical work, carpentry and more, while addressing the company’s need for new workers. Students spend two years in training alongside a cohort of 10 students, followed by a two-year commitment to employment at Trident. Wrangell High School alumnus Jacen Hay learned about the program during a presentation to his class. He had...