Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association has teamed up with Copper River Seafoods to promote Bristol Bay sockeye salmon.
The BBRSDA announced on May 16 that the association would provide Bristol Bay sockeye labels for 100,000 packages of fresh sockeye salmon in July.
Becky Martello, executive director of the association, said one big marketing challenge is getting consumers to recognize Bristol Bay is having product in the retail market that is actually labeled Bristol Bay.
Copper River Seafoods, with Copper River salmon as its flagship product, purchased the Extreme Seafoods processing facility at Naknek in 2015.
Cassandra Squibb, marketing officer for Copper River Seafoods, said the goal is to increase the value of the Bristol Bay sockeye resource through brand development.
We are feeling positive about the potential for bringing additional customers on board,” she said.
“This season’s fresh sockeye from Bristol Bay will be available at more than 1,500 stores of a major nationwide retailer,” she said.
Martello said that the BBRSDA is also moving forward with a branding pilot project in a target market later this summer. The concept project will focus primarily on marketing refreshed sockeyes as a means to provide Bristol Bay salmon to consumers all year long. Such a program for refreshed sockeyes has the potential to move large volumes of red salmon out of Bristol Bay to consumers, and given the sheer size of that sockeye harvest, moving a high volume of the catch is a priority,
she said.
The goal of the BBRSDA, which represents gillnet harvesters, is to maximize the value of the Bristol Bay fishery for the benefit of its members.