Miami, Florida, U.S.A.-based BluGlacier – one of Chile's largest salmon importers to the U.S., founded in 2016 as a joint venture between Chilean salmon farmers Blumar and Ventisqueros – said its recent hiring of premium brands sales director Chris Sandagato is another step toward bringing more seafood to customers in the North American market.
“Chris's arrival on our team allows us to draw on his experience in this challenging and important market and continue to strengthen the position of our salmon in the United States. Our brands, Silverside and Laguna Blanca, are valued by consumers in this country, who seek quality, healthy food that is grown with the best social and environmental standards,” BluGlacier CEO Sebastian Goycoolea told SeafoodSource.
Sandagato has extensive experience in the seafood market and comes to BluGlacier to develop the sales strategy for the Silverside brands and, its most recent launch, Laguna Blanca, he noted.
According to Sandagato’s LinkedIn profile, before coming on board with BluGlacier he was sales manager at Royal Greenland for less than a year. Prior to that, he was southeast regional sales manager for Verlasso Salmon - Chilean salmon farmer AquaChile’s premium brand – for nearly three years. He has held similar sales positions with Santa Monica Seafood, Open Blue Sea Farms, and Fortune Fish & Gourmet. The executive studied culinary arts at The Culinary Institute of America and Johnson & Wales University.
BluGlacier recently announced the completion of a major facelift for its Silverside Coho salmon brand – its algae-fed coho salmon raised in the Patagonian region of Chile on Corbion’s AlgaPrime algae-based feed. The move aimed to showcase how the seasonal product is sustainable, featuring teal blue packaging with traces of coral images throughout the background, new fonts, and imagery intended to demonstrate the ease of preparation of the product.
Meanwhile, the Laguna Blanca brand employs Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) standards to raise salmon without antibiotics throughout the entire cultivation cycle, touting sustainability as its selling point.
BluGlacier is the North American sales office for Salmones Blumar and Ventisqueros. The two companies own all aspects of the production of BluGlacier’s salmon. It launched its first-ever direct-to-consumer brand, OSHĒN, in November 2020.
Photo courtesy of Chris Sandagato/Li
