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 take the heads and extract the oil,” selling it in bulk for use in pet foods, in capsules for human consumption and other markets.
“We had an old one (fish oil plant) several years ago,” Welbourn said in an interview June 12. The new one will help Trident make better use of the entire fish.
Packing fish eggs also is a big part of the Wrangell operation, which plans to run through August.
Trident is the largest seafood processor in town. Sea Level Seafoods, owned by Portland-based Pacific Seafood, and Fathom Seafoods, owned by Peninsula Seafoods out of Washington state, also buy from local boats, taking more than just salmon for their longer operating seasons.
Seattle-based Trident, which bought the Wrangell facility about 15 years ago, has had crews getting the plant ready to start handling salmon this summer.
There were short and limited-area Southeast gillnet and seine season openers earlier this week, though none in the Wrangell-Petersburg area.
Welbourn said the plant “pretty much” buys from the seine fleet.
“There will always be a few (gillnetters) close to home who want to dock deliver,” he said of fisherman who may bring their fish to the Wrangell plant.
Trident will continue to have tenders on the seine fishing grounds to bring in the catch for processing. “We really feel that for the freshness,” running tenders into Wrangell “keeps the fleet on the grounds,” he said.
The company ships its Wrangell fish in container vans by barge to Seattle for distribution to markets.
Area gillnetters that sold to Trident generally delivered to the company’s Petersburg operation, which Trident sold this spring to E.C. Phillips & Son, which has operations in Ketchikan and Craig.
Trident this spring also sold its Ketchikan operation to fishermen-owned Silver Bay Seafoods, and was looking to sell its facilities in Kodiak and False Pass in the Aleutian Islands too, as part of “a comprehensive, strategic restructuring initiative” amid weak salmon markets.
“Wrangell is our home in Southeast,” Welbourn said of Trident, which has been in the Alaska seafood business for more than 50 years.
Fathom Seafoods runs a much smaller operation on leased land at The Marine Service Center, where it has been buying shrimp, king crab, halibut, Dungeness crab, and will soon move into the salmon season, said Jeff Grannum, general manager of the parent company Peninsula Seafoods.
Fathom packs fresh salmon — kings, sockeye and silver — and flies its product to Seattle. “We utilize Alaska Air Cargo a lot, big time,” Grannum said.
The company sticks with small- and medium-sized domestic buyers, he said. “They appreciate the small, boutique mix that we are.”
The Sentinel was unable to reach anyone at Sea Level Seafoods for comment on its summer plans.
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