Two Big Seafood Fleets Merging -- Seattle-Based Trident Buys Tyson, Will Be Big In Bering Sea

Seattle-based Trident Seafoods is buying Tyson Seafood Group for an undisclosed sum, making Trident one of the largest seafood companies in America.

The deal, announced today, ends Arkansas parent company Tyson Foods' seven-year venture in the fishing industry, which produced hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.

The company has been searching for a buyer for months.

Trident Seafoods runs several processing plants in Alaska and in Washington state, handling salmon, crab and bottomfish. The deal with Tyson grants Trident, headed by Chuck Bundrant, the Tyson vessels and fishing rights in the billion-dollar Bering Sea bottomfish industry.

Trident will hold one of the largest shares of the annual Bering Sea pollock harvest, the largest single-species fishery in the world. Pollock are used by fast-food chains and in making surimi, a fish paste for imitation crab products.

Tyson Seafood Group had sales of $214 million in 1998.

A division of Tyson that markets surimi fish products is being sold in a separate deal to Bumble Bee Seafoods, a subsidiary of International Home Foods of New Jersey.

Tyson had been rumored to be speaking with Bernt Bodal, former president of Seattle-based American Seafoods. Neither Tyson nor Bodal would comment.

Tyson entered the fishing industry in 1992, buying Seattle-based Arctic Alaksa Fisheries, which operated the largest fleet of factory-fishing ships in the North Pacific.

But two years later, Tyson's chief executive admitted the company had paid too much for Arctic Alaska and had written off more than $200 million.