Monday, November 6, 2023

Changes at the top for OBI Seafoods

Longtime Alaska seafood industry leader Mark Palmer is retiring as OBI Seafoods chief executive.

Here's a press release detailing this and other management moves at the company.

Palmer is on the board of the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Leaving a sinking ship?

Anonymous said...

Roger that. A series of ill-fated moves over 20 years. Merging with Icicle — creating a huge collection of tired plants, mediocre fleets, poor sales, and disappointing tender service. Great job team.

Anonymous said...

Both companies and then the merged OBI failed to invest wisely in their Alaska operations. They allowed Trident (and now Silver Bay) to become the low cost producers, And that's what wins the long battle for survival. Think about how a 500,000 lb/day plant stacks up against a 2,000,000 lb/day plant in terms of production costs. That's the whole story.

Anonymous said...

We have some real experts here.

What is the best market for pink salmon right now, frozen or canned?

Anonymous said...

Wonder how Trident and Silver Bay feel about their low cost producing plants in False Pass.

Genius moves!

Anonymous said...

Trident and SBS must certainly lose in their False Pass plants. But those are probably their only losers. Those plants are the result of a pissing match between the two companies ... which they both lost. But OBI is a collection of 1980s junk. OB and Icicle also had the same opportunity as Trident to invest in Bering Sea pollock early on, but failed to do so. Those hundreds of million lbs of inshore and offshore pollock quota were earned through historic participation and are the financial strength of Trident today.

OBI is a zombie company. And there won't be resurrection.

Anonymous said...

SBS losers: False Pass, Craig, Kodiak plant (crappiest plant on Kodiak Island by a long stretch. They can barely run 300,000 lbs a day, the dock pilings are atrocious and parts of it have been condemned in the last 3 years.)

Trident losers: Akutan, Sand Point, False Pass and Wrangell. If Akutan was such a moneymaker, why would they want to build a new plant in Dutch Harbor even while running 500 million lbs of pollock a year thru it?

Last note, why does SBS want a crappy 1970s Valdez plant that can only run 500k?

Anonymous said...

Akutan has been and continues to be the most profitable processing plant in Alaska. But, you can't land a jet there.

Anonymous said...

Spend $500 million or more to build a plant in Dutch to land a jet ... not sure I follow the logic.

Anonymous said...

All containers, thousands per year, are routed from Akutan to DH before they are officially given a B/L. You can't invoice on product until the B/L clears and the product is officially shipped. So, from a cash flow perspective, having a state-of-the-art plant in DH with immediate access to invoicing customer, it's an obvious win. Also, a runway for jet service makes sense — 1,300 workers coming a going — that's a lot of needless expense.