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, vice president for global communications for the Seattle-based company, said in an email Feb. 22.
Trident added pink salmon to its headed-and-gutted-and-frozen salmon line at the Wrangell plant last year, after handling mostly chum salmon in prior years.
The industry sees promise in delivering more pink salmon products to price-sensitive consumers, Allen Kimball, board chairman of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute and a former vice president at Trident Seafoods, said during an industry webinar Feb. 22.
“Pink salmon is one of the species that we’re spending a lot of time on,” he said of the seafood marketing agency’s efforts to build more consumer demand for wild Alaska salmon.
Soft markets “absolutely demand innovation,” Kimball said. “We have to improve the value of the fish that don’t sell,” and focusing on quality and consumer-friendly products is part of ASMI’s marketing efforts, he said.
Trident cited weak Southeast chum returns for its decision to keep the Wrangell plant closed 2020-2022.
Though returns have picked up, pretty much the entire seafood market is oversupplied, with inventory stacked up and consumers choosing less expensive foods, according to Alaska seafood industry and state officials.
“People are buying less seafood,” Jeremy Woodrow, ASMI executive director, told Southeast business and community leaders earlier this month. Rising food costs, tight household budgets and overall inflation have made it harder for processors to sell to wholesalers and retailers.
High interest rates also have hurt Alaska seafood sales, Kimball explained at the webinar, as buyers cannot afford to hold high inventories of unsold fish. They are looking to take on less risk and reduce their interest payments on borrowed money, which means holding less inventory.
Alaska salmon prices crashed last summer, dropping as low as 20 cents a pound for Southeast chums. In December, Trident announced it would scale back its Alaska operations and wanted to sell its processing plants in Petersburg and Ketchikan.
The company said it intends to keep its Wrangell operation. “Wrangell is a highly efficient plant that makes products that feed our value-added salmon operations,” Telfer said in December.
“Trident’s vision is to grow a value-added, consumer-driven future for the company, and we need to focus the investments and build the products that support that,” Telfer said in December. “Wrangell is included in the plans to continue modernizing our Alaska plants.”
Trident bought the downtown waterfront Wrangell plant almost 15 years ago. It can handle up to 750,000 pounds of fish per day, significantly more than the Petersburg operation, according to the company’s website.
The Ketchikan plant, with canning lines in addition to freezing lines, is the company’s largest facility in Southeast.
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