North Pacific Seafoods’ recent purchase of Yardam Knot’s Red Salmon processing plant will allow the Japanese-owned company to expand its product base from primarily frozen fillets and shellfish to canned product.
Seattle-based North Pacific, which is a subsidiary of Marubeni Corp. of Japan, purchased the Red Salmon facility — one of Alaska’s largest sockeye salmon producers — for approximately USD 47 million in late December. The acquisition is slated to close in mid-January.
“It’s a big deal for the company. We are really excited about it,” Jeff Backlund, vice president of North Pacific, told SeafoodSource. “They have both canned and frozen fillet production, so it gives us a better, more varied product mix.”
Up until now, North Pacific focused on production of frozen fillets at its four processing plants in Alaska. The company supplies halibut, salmon, pollock, cod, rockfish, shellfish, caviar and other wild seafood products.
Because Yardam Knot already runs a “successful operation,” said Backlund, North Pacific is not planning immediate operations or personnel changes but will likely make changes in the future.
“We do hope to have the entire management team in place. We don’t plan to make big changes,” said Backlund.
Once the deal closes, however, “We will begin to look at everything from accounting to production methods and see what is the most efficient way to do things and cross-reference that [with what North Pacific is doing],” said Backlund. “It will be a long-term, ongoing process — an evolution.”
