A U.S. district court judge has issued a warrant for the arrest of Northline Seafoods’ freezer barge Hannah after the company failed to pay some of its debts.
The order, filed 30 April, comes in response to a lawsuit lodged against Northline Seafoods – under the legal name Sayak Logistics – by Leo’s Welding and Fabrication claiming the company owes it money for work it performed on the Hannah. According to the initial compliant, Leo’s Welding filed a maritime lien against the company for more than USD 1.2 million (EUR 1.08 million), which it said has still not been paid.
According to court documents, Leo’s Welding performed nearly USD 2 million (EUR 1.8 million) in work for Northline on its vessel after the company made “multiple requests for additional services” which the company invoiced for. It added that some of the work was done in an “extremely tight timeline” leading up to the vessel departing the Bellingham/Fairhaven Shipyard to Alaska in advance of the Bristol Bay salmon season.
That season was cut short for the company after the Hannah caught fire on 30 June 2024. The company said that one of its three spiral freezers had an electrical fire, which forced the company to operate at a reduced capacity after just a month into its journey.
Northline Seafoods CEO Ben Blakey previously told SeafoodSource the Hannah has a capacity of 14 million pounds and can process up to 50,000 pounds of salmon per day. Blakey said the company planned to continue operating throughout the season to the extent it was able, and called the incident a setback.
In court filings responding to the lawsuit from Leo’s Welding, the company said “some financial reverses” resulted from the fire, which caused Northline to fail to pay some of the vendors that worked on the vessel. While the company said it has reached agreements with most of those vendors, it still has not done so with Leo’s, and that the amount it owes the company is in dispute.
“Sayak is placed in a very difficult position by Leo’s motion for arrest,” the company said. “The timing of the present action and potential arrest implicates Sayak’s plans for the vessel this year, as the vessel is presently being readied for service and needs to be underway in the next four to six weeks to be ready for the upcoming season.”
The company’s filing said the arrest of the vessel, if it interferes with the Bristol Bay salmon season, will be severe and “potentially fatal” to the company’s aspirations – while it said denying the arrest will cause no harm to Leo’s Welding. The company also said any disruption to its preparations before the Bristol Bay salmon season will risk the economic prospects of all of its employees and contractors.
Northline also said that any arrest of the vessel could also jeopardize its insurance policies.
“It required over six months of effort to secure the Vessel’s current policies, and if the Vessel’s policies are voided, then the Vessel will be uninsured until new policies can be can secured,” the court filing said.
The lawsuit is the latest in a line of setbacks for Northline. In addition to the fire in 2024, the company also had one of its prototype barges come loose in 2020 and run aground causing severe damage. That damage lead the company to settle on building a new, larger floating processor – the Hannah.
