Silver Bay Seafoods takes over OBI processing plants

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 Seafoods and Icicle Seafoods, creating a joint ownership between Icicle Seafoods and BBEDC which owned Ocean Beauty.

The Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. is one of six entities that own fisheries quotas for economic development in 65 Western Alaska villages. In 2007, it acquired Ocean Beauty.

Silver Bay will take over the management of OBI seafood plants in Petersburg, Seward, Larsen Bay, Egigik, Wood River, Cordova, Kodiak and Naknek, as well as the warehouse and labeling facility south of Seattle. The plants produce salmon, whitefish and crab in fresh, frozen and canned products.

OBI’s Petersburg plant is one of the community’s largest employers.

“What we’ve all been told and are operating on, is to plan for 2025 — full steam ahead as usual,” Laura McFadden, assistant fleet manager for OBI in Petersburg, told the Petersburg Pilot newspaper last week.

The Petersburg plant processes multiple species including salmon, halibut and Dungeness crab.

Silver Bay Seafoods is owned by 600 fishermen, and processes frozen salmon, herring, whitefish and squid products for U.S. markets and export. It is one of the largest seafood companies in Alaska, with 13 of its own processing facilities in the state, including Sitka, Craig, Ketchikan, Valdez, Kodiak, Bristol Bay and False Pass, and three on the U.S. West Coast.

Trident Seafoods sold its Ketchikan processing facilities to Silver Bay last spring as Trident was scaling back its Alaska operations.

Then a few months later, Silver Bay acquired Trident’s seafood processing facility and fuel business in False Pass on Unimak Island located between the western tip of the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands.