King of Fish Sticks

It's been a tough year for Seattle's titans of industry. Starbucks just reported a 97 percent drop in quarterly profit. Boeing suffered a machinists strike that cost it an estimated $5 billion in revenue. Safeco was bought out by Liberty Mutual after its shares plummeted. Washington Mutual went bankrupt. And Microsoft just can't get many people excited about its new version of Windows. Bill Gates even dropped from first to third on Forbes' list of unimaginably wealthy humans, perhaps the surest bellwether of the region's economic woes.

But as the rest of Seattle's corporate world succumbs to the economic headwinds, Trident Seafoods, headquartered in a three-story converted warehouse on Shilshole Bay, just had its biggest year, hitting over $1 billion in sales, according to the company (Trident is privately owned and so does not publicly report audited financial results). The company, run by a tall 66-year-old Tennessean named Chuck Bundrant who started with an Alaska crab boat in the 1970s, has become one of the biggest players in the United States fishing industry. Saleswise, Trident is more than 20 times the size of local companies like Jones Soda or Redhook, and yet it remains relatively unknown in its hometown.

Bundrant propelled his company to the top of the food chain by recognizing the unexploited potential of groundfish—fish that live near the bottom of the ocean—in the waters of Alaska. Over three decades, Bundrant worked to develop new markets for what were previously considered "trash fish," convincing fast-food chains and retailers like Costco to use pollock, for instance, in sandwiches and fake crab dips. As other U.S. fisheries have gone into steep decline, the Alaska groundfish fishery has become the biggest in the country by far, thanks in part to Bundrant. At the same time he built a vertically-integrated enterprise that now does everything from the mass processing of fish to the creation of a special "gourmet" fish stick with Bundurant's face on the package.

"It's a pretty incredible success story," says Steve Hughes, president of Seattle-based Natural Resources Consultants, which tracks fish stocks and the companies that catch them.

To get the high-value, brand-name retail operation going, Trident bought a warehouse off Pier 91 in Magnolia. There, slabs of cod or pollock are sliced on assembly lines. Fillets rumble down conveyor belts, dumping into vats of hot oil for frozen fish 'n' chips. Others are seasoned and packed. In an attached kitchen, chefs come up with new ideas for easily frozen and packaged retail products. On the other side of the warehouse is a freezer the size of a city block—chilled to minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Row after row of boxed and frozen fish wait for distribution trucks to whisk them off to grocery stores.

Bundrant, who granted SW just one five-minute in-person conversation after several requests for interviews, says he recently walked down the aisles at Costco and counted 10 products on the shelves that came directly or indirectly from Trident. The company recently got an account with Safeway to make a line of frozen fish dinners under the name Waterfront Bistro.

"What we have been trying to do is be a one-stop shop for seafood," company spokesman John van Amerongen says.

But Bundrant's good fortune has not come from the magic of the free market alone. Over the years, Bundrant cultivated some strong allies in Congress—most especially, just-deposed Alaska Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Don Young, both famous for sponsoring the "bridge to nowhere." They worked to provide legislation of benefit to Trident, and generally sought to reduce foreign competition, bringing more of the Alaskan catch under domestic, and Bundrant's, control. Other regulatory bodies have also been kind to Trident. Just last week, a decision by the Pacific Fishery Management Council granted Trident and a handful of other companies 20 percent of the whiting catch off the West Coast, overriding the objections of individual fishers.

Bundrant's reliance on legislative help could put Trident in a more vulnerable position in the years ahead. He is about to lose his biggest ally in Congress. Pending recounts in Alaska, Stevens' 40-year career is now over. He just lost his bid for re-election. Last month, a jury found Stevens guilty of making false statements on financial disclosure forms after he accepted unreported gifts from a contractor to whom Stevens steered government contracts. While Trident was not implicated in the felony charges against the Senator, an investigation of Stevens' son has hit closer to home.

Federal agents raided Ben Stevens' office in 2005 in an ongoing investigation of the onetime state senator's relationship to the fishing and oil industries. The U.S. Justice Department has issued subpoenas to fishing companies, including Trident, as part of that investigation. (A Trident attorney says the company complied with the subpoena but hasn't heard anything since.)

Meanwhile, Alaska's sole representative, Don Young, has started building a defense fund of his own as feds investigate him for corruption. Young helped push Trident's legislative agenda through the House, where he serves as ranking member on the House Natural Resources Committee. Bundrant, his wife, Diane, and son Joseph, also a Trident executive, have donated more than $25,000 to Young's campaigns since 1993, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.