Fishermen gathered at the PAF Boatyard in Dillingham on Saturday evening. Peter Pan Seafoods had invited them there for a surprise announcement.
Travis Roenfanz, the company’s Bristol Bay manager, got up on a small wooden stage to speak.
"I’m going to announce our 2021 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon base price. We will be paying a dollar ten,” he said.
That’s $1.10 for every pound of sockeye caught in Bristol Bay.
It’s the first time in at least 25 years that a Bristol Bay processor has announced its base price this early in the year, Roenfanz said. The move has to do with the processor’s new ownership.
"Peter Pan is a new company this year, and they are really remodeling how they're thinking about things, more vertically integrated and trying to get a better quality product to the market," Roenfanz said.
The company said in a news release that it set the base price early to "put the fleet at ease that they will receive a fair price for the long hours and hard work they are about to endure" during the fishery.
Fishermen in the crowd cheered the announcement.
The base price is significantly higher than last year's price of $0.70, but it’s still lower than the 2019 price of $1.35.
Even so, the fact that fishermen know that price now — in June, before they get out in the water — is a big deal.
Fisherman Andy Peitsch said knowing what he’ll earn now takes away a lot of stress.
“It’s way better. Everyone has a better attitude. Deckhands can kind of do the math in their heads, skippers can do the math in their heads about what you’re catching, about what you’re going to make,” he said.
Peitsch has fished in the bay for 37 years. He thinks the announcement will put pressure on other processors to follow suit.
Peter Pan has also told fishermen the bonuses it will pay this year for icing, chilling and bleeding salmon. And it plans to have a production bonus in September.
In an interview after the announcement, Roenfanz said that setting the base price early also allows the company to better plan for the season.
"We know where the base is going to be set now, we can look at the market and know what we have coming up for our fresh markets and our frozen markets, and it gives us a good base starting point," he said.
Another fisherman in the crowd, Pete Canon, said while he’s excited about this year’s base price, he still thinks it could be higher.
“Well, the price in the market hasn’t gone down at all for the consumer, so I think they could be a little more generous than that," he said. "But a dollar ten, and then we have refrigeration prices on top of that, and other incentives. So I do believe it’s a step in the right direction, that’s for darn sure.”
At the beginning of the year, Japanese seafood company Maruha Nichiro sold Peter Pan to three buyers, including the Anchorage-based investment firm McKinley Capital Management.
Since then, the owners have been aggressively promoting their new vision for the company. The deal vertically integrated Peter Pan: Now, all stages of production and marketing — often operated separately — are under one owner.
Bristol Bay processors all usually pay the same base price for sockeye, though bonuses vary by company. Whether Peter Pan has set a precedent for other processors remains to be seen; No other company has set its base price yet — they usually wait until the end of the season.
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