Trident Seafoods has officially implanted the “Spirit of Alaska” in Georgia – the U.S. seafood harvester and processor cut the ribbon to its new Carrollton, Ga. facility on 30 July in an event that saw members of the company-founding Bundrant and Ness families in attendance.
The USD 40 million (EUR 36.5 million) seafood R&D, value-adding plant gives the Seattle-headquartered Trident new leverage in the southeastern United States. Previously, Trident’s closest facility to east coast retailers, customers and foodservice distributors was based in Motley, Minn., where the company generates much of its frozen surimi seafood items under the Louis Kemp brand. With the new Carrollton plant, Trident sits just 50 miles from Atlanta.
“We didn’t come here to Carrollton by accident,” Joe Bundrant, Trident’s CEO, said during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Georgia plant. “The decision to come here was really pretty easy to make. We came here because you welcomed us and opened the doors to the State of Georgia, to Carroll County and to the City of Carrollton… and you said, ‘Come on in.’ ”
Thanks to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, the Georgia Department of Economic Development and Carroll Tomorrow, Trident was able to acquire the landmass it needed to expand upon Carrollton’s existing Chiquita food processing facility. The facility sits on nearly 81 acres of land and has an 88,000 sq/ft manufacturing floor overlooked by 18,000 sq/ft of office space and another 20,000 sq/ft of support area, according to Trident specifics. Additionally, the facility houses a distribution center with 67,000 sq/ft of cold storage space to keep finished products at zero degrees Fahrenheit until shipment, and 15 truck bays.
Upwards of 100 area workers were trained in food safety and seafood processing to prepare for Trident’s Carrollton grand opening; once the plant is fully operational, Trident expects to employ 175 workers in total for the business.
“Purchasing, modernizing and expanding the existing processing plant in Carrollton to accommodate our needs was a good fit for us, and we have faith that it will be a good fit for Carrollton,” Bundrant said. “We want to grow our business in the Eastern U.S. and Carrollton is situated close to our customers. The site offered us the additional space we needed to build a modern cold storage and distribution center. And your transportation infrastructure allows us to source raw materials and to deliver our finished products to important markets in a timely fashion.”
“For all of us at Trident, this is a very big deal, and a very proud moment,” Bondurant concluded.
Trident aims to produce a line of portioned-controlled seafood products out of its new plant featuring species such as pollock, cod, salmon halibut, tilapia, sole and mahi mahi.
