An emerging seafood company is preparing to purchase its first loads of pink and chum salmon from a handful of seine boats in Metlakatla this summer while also building a high-tech floating freezer barge at a Washington shipyard that the company plans to operate in Southeast Alaska next year.
Circle Seafoods, which was founded by Pat Glaab, Charlie Campbell and Eren Shultz, is renting out a portion of the Metlakatla Indian Community’s Annette Island Packing Co. plant this year while starting up a statewide operation that’s geared at buying and freezing salmon on barges on the fishing grounds, and further processing fish on-demand after returning the barges to the Lower 48 to use for year-round cold storage.
During an interview with the Ketchikan Daily News in June, Campbell said that Circle aims to buy 20 million to 30 million pounds of primarily pink and chum salmon in Alaska next year after finishing up construction of its first freezer barge.
He said Circle plans to kick-start its operations this summer by buying about 5 million pounds of salmon from four seine fishermen that participate in commercial fisheries managed by the Metlakatla Indian Community who have signed contracts with Circle for the season.
Campbell said he recognizes that Circle is entering the industry at a time that major seafood companies across Alaska are shuttering or selling off plants and slashing prices that they pay salmon fishermen due to overwhelming competition and an abundance of fish on global seafood markets.
He said Circle is bringing a new approach the Alaska seafood processing scene because his co-founder, Glaab, has a “vision to address many of the major challenges that the industry is facing today.”
Glaab has worked in the industry for 40 years and designed, built and operated Silver Bay Seafoods’ first three processing plants, and is now leading Circle to develop its first barge that is set to arrive in Alaska waters for the 2025 salmon season, according to Campbell.
He said Circle in 2023 closed on a “fairly complicated” $36 million financing package, after which it ordered its first barge, which is currently under construction at the Quigg Bros. shipyard in Aberdeen, Washington.
Campbell said the floating plant will flash-freeze whole salmon on the fishing grounds “very quickly, freezing it to negative 40.” The barge will be three stories high to hold up to 12 million pounds of fish.
The barge will have space to house about 80 workers, while moving between fishing areas.
Circle’s website also pitches to prospective fishing fleet members “the comforts of town every time you tie up to one of our barges” with services such as “laundry, showers, high-speed internet, on-call mechanics, free slush ice and, most importantly, hot food.”
“Once the season is over, the barge switches from a processor to a transporter and cold storage, moving your catch closer to reprocessing facilities where fish is then portioned and ready for distribution on demand,” Circle says on its website.
Circle had intended to launch the barge for the 2024 salmon season in Southeast, but as the season approached, the company’s leadership shifted its focus, according to Campbell.
The company’s leaders decided to focus on getting off the ground this year by buying, freezing and selling its first loads of fish at a preexisting facility in Southeast to “establish relationships with fishermen, establish ourselves as a company and pay well .... work on our operations, implement some of the technology, but really get started at a smaller scale.”
Circle decided to lease out part of the Annette Island Packing plant, which has been in the community for more than 100 years but shuttered its fish-buying operations in 2019 before reopening this summer.
To start, Circle is keeping its fleet small as a way to be “very cautious about over-fleeting, and not overpromising and under-delivering,” Campbell said.
In the long term, Circle plans to expand its fleet of freezer barges into statewide operations.
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