A letter penned by 92 fishermen based in and around Port Moller, Alaska, U.S.A., has compelled Rodger May to withdraw his bid for assets – including a Port Moller processing facility – owned by Peter Pan Seafoods, which is now in receivership.
May, who purchased Peter Pan along with McKinley Capital in 2021, had offered USD 15 million (EUR 13.8 million) for Peter Pan’s warehouse in Seattle, Washington; its processing facility in Port Moller, Alaska; its King Cove, Alaska fuel business; and other assets. But he withdrew his bid 8 August after the letter became public.
“May and co-owners have done irreparable harm to the many people and their families that make their living from the commercial fisheries on the Alaska Peninsula,” the letter said. “There are still many fishermen that have not been paid for fish they delivered as well as vendors and tenders not being paid for goods and services provided. The trust with Mr. May and his businesses as a viable partner, which the commercial fishing community needs, has been permanently broken.”
Peter Pan’s closure of its King Cove plant in January 2024, combined with a lease-to-sell deal that has transferred control of its Port Moller facility to Silver Bay Seafoods, has left it with no remaining operational physical plant in Alaska. Despite suffering hardships as a result, the area’s fishermen refuse to continue working with Peter Pan, according to the letter.
“The impact to the King Cove community is tremendous, with loss of tax revenues and jobs,” the letter said. “Without fish being processed in Port Moller, the costs to tender fish large distances increase and is not as viable during tough market conditions that the industry is currently withstanding. The future viability of Port Moller is of vital importance to the region and needs a company that is healthy to be the lead processor in the area and Mr. May and his business associates are not the future.”
All signors of the letter vowed to not deliver fish or enter into any business relationship with May, citing numerous liens recently filed by its contracted fishermen and other partners, after coping with a previous set of claims in 2023.
“His past actions of not paying fishermen for the fish delivered to his company as well as not paying tender owners and operators and many vendors has broken the trust forever in working with him,” the letter said.
In his court filing, May’s attorney did not address the reason for the withdrawal of May’s bid to buy the Peter Pan assets. But commercial fisherman Patrick Springer, who has fished for Peter Pan since its beginning in Alaska and who organized the letter-writing effort, told SeafoodSource he considered the campaign – which was explicitly aimed at invalidating May’s bid for the processing plants – a success.
“The goal of it was for the receivers, or whoever the power is making these decisions, to see the overriding sentiment here is that having Rodger May involved isn't going to work,” Springer said. “Our goal was to get Rodger to back off, and to get the receivership to understand that it’s futile for him to be making this bid. The letter shows he has no fleet and that nobody is going to sell him any fish. So why even bother?”
Springer said he had nothing personal against May, and that he had remained in business with Peter Pan “until the very bitter end” out of loyalty to his longtime buyer.
“Rodger kept saying we would be taken care of, and I stuck with him because I’m a very loyal guy,” Springer said. “Unfortunately, he failed. Whatever it was that caused it, it didn’t work, and I lost my healthcare and my startup costs as a result. I took a hit by being loyal to Rodger May for as long as I did, and there weren’t many of us that did. But the bottom line is now that I need Port Moller to stay open or I’ll go bankrupt, and Silver Bay is the only viable option now to do it.”
Springer credited Silver Bay with investing a significant sum into Port Moller to make it functional in time for this summer’s salmon season.
“Silver Bay came in and pretty much picked up the pieces,” Springer said. “We didn’t know what was going to happen with Port Moller, or whether we’d even be able to fish or sell fish this year. It was a big expense for Silver Bay to come in and operate that facility just to support the fleet. By doing that, they have won the support of the fleet here.”
The letter had the impact of eliminating Silver Bay’s only competition for the purchase of Peter Pan’s Alaska assets, but Springer said the company was not involved with the campaign.
“We do want Silver Bay to get this get this plant, because they appear to be the only viable option that can do it. There’s not many companies with the strength right now – the whole industry is struggling, but Silver Bay is doing OK and we're really hoping they things turn around for the industry and this area,” Springer said.
May, a wealthy entrepreneur who previously owned Copper River Seafoods and worked as a Hollywood producer – and who maintains other seafood industry ties, including an investment in LocalCoho – has aggressively pursued an attempt to outbid Silver Bay for Peter Pan’s assets, including 750,000 cases of canned salmon that Silver Bay agreed to pay USD 27.3 million (EUR 25 million) for on 5 August.
Springer said because of that history, most local fishermen were excited when May became part of the leadership group running Peter Pan in 2021.
“Under the former owners, Maruha Nichiro, it seemed like they always had a loss. But when Rodger and McKinley came it, everything felt rejuvenated and there was a lot of initial enthusiasm,” Springer said. “They made a lot of promises that they were going to get the fleet back [that Maruha had lost to competitors]. But it seemed like the reality never matched the hype.”
In 2021 and 2022, Peter Pan was the first major processor to set a price for sockeye, but Springer said the price wasn’t high enough to pull previous defectors back into its fold. Then the market collapse of 2023 hit and, combined with previous damage done by the Covid-19 pandemic, the company’s operations seemed to unravel, according to Springer.
“There had been talk of doing profit-sharing and other perks for the fleet, and none of that materialized,” he said. “I think the timing was wrong. We had the whole debacle with Covid and then the whitefish market fell out two years ago, and the company just seemed to fall behind, using the current season’s earnings to pay the previous season’s fishermen.”
Springer said several of his fellow Area M gill-netters are still owed money from Peter Pan.
“Too many people have still not been paid, and that trust that Peter Pan had here is just irrevocably, permanently broken,” he said. “While I never had anything personal against Rodger, it’s a pretty small, tight-knit community here, and because I was one of Peter Pan’s top producers, there was a prevailing opinion we had to make a stand, and I felt I had the stature with the company to lead this [letter-writing] effort.”
Springer said his decision was catalyzed by May’s broken promise to operate the Port Moller facility this season.
“I told them I needed to know by a certain date, and Rodger and [McKinley CEO] Rob Gillam gave me a 100 percent commitment they would be operating Port Moller,” Springer said. “Because of that, I lost my health insurance and all the costs of getting on the water, and there were a lot of other guys who had it even worse because of that guarantee.”
In contrast, Silver Bay has proven itself to be a dedicated, reliable partner, according to Springer. He said he hopes Silver Bay can reopen the King Cove plant soon to help the community there, which is highly dependent on tax revenue from the facility.
Because of Peter Pan’s collapse and Trident Seafoods’ shrinking of its Alaska footprint, Silver Bay is essentially now the sole operator in some areas of Alaska, which Springer acknowledged gives the company an advantage. But he’s hoping for better treatment by Silver Bay than Peter Pan.
“They do profit-sharing, so if they do well, we do well,” he said. “It is a little unnerving to put all your eggs in one basket, because they could just stop buying if we have a big year and then we’ll have no other alternative like we’ve had in the past. But we’re not as concerned about them treating us badly because of its fishermen-owned model.”
Springer doesn’t entirely blame May for the situation Alaska’s salmon fishermen find themselves in.
“It’s just the market. Markets crash and things happen,” he said. “We had a couple of really big years in Bristol Bay, and quality kind of got thrown out the window in favor of quantity. And I heard they couldn't market the stuff. But I think the problem has been recognized and the industry is moving back toward quality. And that’s being helped by the smaller run we’re having in Bristol Bay this year. Simple supply and demand, that makes a big difference.”
Springer said there’s hope that this year will represent a turning point in the salmon fishery around King Cove and Port Moller. But he can’t spend that much time thinking about it because he still needs to survive the season.
“Everybody’s struggling,” he said. “We're going to stand behind the company that stood behind us in our time of need, and that's where we're at.”
