What Time in American Samoa

Hard time for American Samoa

Things have been rough for the American cannery as a whole, but for a small "Pacific country" like American Samoa (they have US passes, but not the same claims as the remainder of their citizens) the recent Tri Marine announcements to close the Samoa Tuna Processors plant, which would lead to 800 redundancies, is particularly so.

It seems to be the outcome of many things, as the expiry of the South Pacific Tuna Agreement at the beginning of this year and the slow pace of revival talks hindered the fleets in most of its main fisheries. Fisheries continued to be hard after the renewal of the contract, as the fishery moved eastwards, leading to a shortage of resources in the area.

At the end of last year, Tri Marine failed to grant a government fiscal relief known as an American-Samoan government exemption to firms that had previously set up factories worth billions, but not to firms that had been constructed after 2006. Tri Marine opened a new $70 million canned tunnel in the town of Atu'u in January 2015.

Samoa TN Processors' plant was fitted with state-of-the-art technologies to produce stock-stable and deep-freeze processed goods that were distributed and shipped to the United States through The Tri Marine's subsequent sales channel, The Tuna Store. They envisaged a commercial paradigm of verticals between their US flag ships, their converting plants and their sales channel, which enabled them to commercialise and resell tunas bearing the "Product of the USA" brand to their US consumer base.

The" US product" is a fine example, but the reality of cannabis as a foodstuff and the problems of supplies seem too great. Being the main retailer of own brands in the retail grocery trade, Tri Marine also had to persuade its large business customers that its cannabis is valuable for a bonus.

There are some of Tri Marine's top managers I know and they are good, strong individuals who are dedicated to the Pacific..... It is interesting to note that there are at least 14 US-flagged pole-and-line ships (owned by Ocean Global Fisheries, Sea Global Fisheries and Pacific Global, together known as the Global Fleets), but these "American ships" do not even work in relation to American Samoa, but are based on the Taipei an merchant business, so that they essentially fish for Thailand and not for the "homeland".

Thun fishing, as always, is full of turnarounds and complexity.