Teaneck, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based Eastern Fish Company has been forced to make adjustments following Marubeni’s sale of North Pacific Seafoods in 2021, according to Eric Bloom, the company’s president and COO.
Marubeni, a Tokyo, Japan-based conglomerate, which reported USD 68 billion (EUR 62.4 billion) in sales and USD 4 billion (EUR 3.7 billion) in profit in 2022, acquired Eastern Fish in 2014 with the goal of strengthening its U.S. sales and distribution channels. That included a tie-in to grow Eastern Fish’s value-added business with product supplied by North Pacific’s five processing plants in Alaska, Bloom told SeafoodSource in advance of the 2024 Global Seafood Market Conference, taking place 23 to 25 January in Orlando, Florida, U.S.A.
“Part of our strategy was to take that fish, do some value addition, and bring it to market, which we started to do very successfully,” Bloom said. “Just as we were really reaching that volume and that success, [Marubeni] sold [North Pacific], which was good for them and their goals but changed what we had to do.”
Marubeni has shifted to a preference for aquaculture and, in particular, land-based salmon projects, notably making investments in Proximar Seafood and Danish Salmon as a means to ensure stable supply, Bloom said.
However, between that pivot and the difficult situation faced by the global seafood industry in 2022, Eastern Fish has seen ...
Photo by Cliff White/SeafoodSource
