Rodger May was the highest bidder at an auction of most of Peter Pan Seafoods’ assets, beating out rival Silver Bay Seafoods.
May, who acquired 50 percent of Peter Pan Seafoods in 2021, agreed to pay more than USD 37.32 million (EUR 33.38 million) for three processing facilities and groundfish quota, among other assets. That beat Silver Bay’s bid of USD 37.07 million (EUR 33.17 million) and 19 other bidders, according to a purchase and sale agreement dated 19 September and posted publicly 20 September.
The assets were auctioned on 16 and 17 September after Peter Pan entered receivership in April 2024 at the behest of Wells Fargo, its largest creditor. They include seafood-processing facilities in Dillingham, Port Moller, and King Cove, Alaska, U.S.A., as well as support facilities in Naknek and Sand Point. They also include a one-third ownership stake in a warehouse in Seattle, Washington, where the company was based. The Peter Pan Fish and Ikura brands, branded supplies, Bering Sea cod and crab quota, an American Fisheries Act permit, and unspecified seafood inventory were also included in the package.
May’s purchase, which will be split between USD 25.3 million (EUR 22.6 million) in cash and USD 12 million (EUR 10.7 million) in credit previously lent by May to Peter Pan, must still be verified by the judge overseeing the case at a 3 October hearing in Seattle.
The breaking up of Peter Pan has been riven by contention. In August, Silver Bay Seafoods won a bid to acquire Peter Pan’s frozen seafood assets for USD 27.3 million (EUR 25 million), despite May’s ostensibly higher bid. May has argued Hilco Corporate Finance, which was hired by Peter Pan in 2023 to facilitate a sale of the company or its assets, has a conflict of interest as an unsecured creditor and that it has withheld information about the estate from him. And, in June 2024, OBI Seafoods also waded into the process, backing May’s request to amend the receivership.
Hilco Corporate Finance Senior Managing Director Kyle Herman told SeafoodSource his company would have no comment on the auction.
May has also faced criticism from a group of Alaska fishermen, who sent a letter to the judge in the case claiming he had done “irreparable harm to the many people and their families that make their living from the commercial fisheries on the Alaska Peninsula” by not paying for fish delivered or vendors’ services.
“The trust with Mr. May and his businesses as a viable partner, which the commercial fishing community needs, has been permanently broken,” the group wrote.
The fishermen strongly prefer Silver Bay as a commercial partner, according to commercial fisherman Patrick Springer, who has fished for Peter Pan since its beginning in Alaska and who organized the letter-writing effort.
“The bottom line is I need Port Moller to stay open or I’ll go bankrupt, and Silver Bay is the only viable option now to do it,” he told SeafoodSource in August.
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 and Dillingham facilities to Silver Bay and left it with no remaining operational physical plant in Alaska during the 2024 salmon season.
