With the debut of its new Frozen Alaska Pink Salmon Fillets, Wild Alaska salmon processor Circle Seafoods is betting big on the “underdog” of the salmon world.
The company, which is working on a barge that will process and freeze salmon, is currently still working on getting that facility operational. In the meantime, Circle Seafoods Co-Founder Eren Shultz told SeafoodSource the company is using the Annette Island Packing Company facility to prove its processing methodology will produce a superior product at an affordable price.
Circle Seafoods, founded in 2022, aims to eventually build and operate a mobile barge where the company buys salmon direct from fishermen and freezes it on the water soon after they are caught. The idea is to buy and freeze millions of pounds of salmon, which the company can then process later on demand for companies to deliver a better-quality product.
Shultz said the original plan was to have the barge completed already – but the company decided to partner with the Metlakatla Indian Community at its Annette Island Packing Plant to build up the operational experience first.
“Could we get this barge done? Yes, but everything would need to go perfectly in order to get it done. We were a startup that was also doing a construction project. Neither of those two things have very good associations with ‘perfect,’” Shultz said.
Shultz said Pat Glaab – the company’s CEO – has done a lot of construction projects and recognized the challenges in getting a full processing facility on a barge ready and operational in a short amount of time.
“So we said, ‘Well, there’s this opportunity here that allows us to walk before we run and get a little product on the market,’” Shultz said.
The Annette Island facility would allow them to accomplish some of its core goals before having the full facility online – including buying fish and developing relationships with fishermen to build their trust in the company’s ability to make sure they get paid.
Another benefit of starting on an existing facility was building operational experience that can be transitioned over to the barge facility when it's complete – which was part of what the company did in the summer of 2024 as it prepared to launch its new pink salmon product.
“Hindsight is always 2020, but I think that everything happens for a reason, and we are in a much better position because we were able to do all of our three core things ...
