The second generation of leadership at Trident Seafoods, America’s biggest fishing company, commits to reinvesting billions to shore up its Alaska operations and pave the way for a third generation to take over.has made the remote Alaskan island of Akutan its second home for the past five decades. There’s a church built by the firm’s founder and a nearby airport that the company convinced Congress to help pay for.
“We have no exit strategy,” says Bundrant, 56, over bites of some of Trident’s specialties: herb-crusted pollock, sockeye salmon with a tomato jam glaze, a salmon burger slider and Japanese-style Takoyaki, or fried balls of octopus and pollock. “Less than zero interest in selling.” In 1973, Chuck Bundrant cofounded Trident Seafoods in Alaska with two crab fishermen. They created the 135-foot Bilikin, the first fishing boat with on-board crab cookers and freezing equipment. Trident still operates it. In the 1980s, competition for Pacific cod peaked. Chuck Bundrant turned to Alaskan pollock, which chefs called a trash fish. As Joe Bundrant recalls, there was no sales plan.
“I’ve been to fisheries all over the world, from Latvia to Denmark and South America. Trident does it better than any of them. By far.”The Bundrant family accumulated 80% ownership in the company through a series of deals. ConAgra acquired 50% in 1989, when Trident was a small company that needed the fuel to grow and ConAgra had a Northwest fish division that wasn’t making any money. Chuck Bundrant turned it around, and after seven years, ConAgra offered to buy out the cofounders’ shares.
There’s also the changing environment to consider. A few years ago, when Alaska’s Bristol Bay, home to one of the most plentiful salmon runs on earth, was threatened by a mining project known as Pebble Mine, Trident’s lobbyists worked to halt excavation.