Ocean Beauty Will Not Can Alaskan Salmon This Summer at Petersburg Facility
Ocean Beauty Seafoods will not be canning fish at the company’s plant in Petersburg this summer. Tom Sunderland, vice president of marketing, says current market conditions favor selling frozen salmon over canned. “We’re gonna make a lot more money selling frozen salmon than canned salmon this year and the Petersburg plant is essentially a cannery,” Sunderland explained. We reported how wholesale prices for imported frozen salmon from Chile reached an all-time record high at the end of January.
Alaska's State Senate Finance Committee asked Alex Tonkovich, the executive director of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, if the group could tap into its reserve funding rather than take $2 million in state funding. Tonkovich said she would bring the state's request back to the ASMI board, but noted that ASMI’s reserves were earmarked to deal with unexpected events in the global seafood industry. “We need flexibility to react to changing market conditions,” she said “We have had to react very quickly in the past,” she said.
In other news, Japanese squid processors in Hokkaido are struggling for survival by diversifying their product lineups in face of a serious raw material supply shortage. For some processors, squid accounts for as much as 70 percent of their processing capacity. Operators are now seeking alternative items in and out of seafood including octopus, salmon and even potatoes.
Meanwhile, Alaska's Board of Fish is meeting this month and will consider 174 fishery management proposals for the Upper Cook Inlet commercial, sport, person use and subsistence fisheries. “What we do is we’ll walk a group through the Board of Fish process – go through the term s, the meeting lay out, how it moves from staff reports to public testimony, to committee and deliberations and just tell them where they want to fit in and get their input in and how to provide more effective testimony, how to speak to board members and make a strong impact ,and just make them more familiar with it," said Board director, Glenn Haight. The Board will meet February 23 through March 8 in Anchorage.
Finally, Chilean salmon producer Nova Austral said toxic algae killed 149,000 smolts as they were being shipped to grow out centers in the Magallanes region from Los Lagos. The toxic algae strain Karenia mikomotoi was detected in the smolt when they arrived dead. Nova Austral has suspended all salmon planting at its centers until they can confirm the algae is not spreading. So far there is no indication where the algae originated from.
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