Ocean Beauty announced the permanent closure of its Petersburg facility in August.
The Ocean Beauty Seafoods processing plant and bunk house in Petersburg for just under $3.4M according to kfsk.org.
It was believed back in January that Ocean Beauty Seafoods would have keep its salmon cannery but low pink salmon harvest forecasts and a trend towards fresh salmon were blamed for the decision to close the facility.
The radio station reported that the company has invested money in its Excursion Inlet plant, about 40 miles west of Juneau, which is focusing on more fresh and frozen processing instead of canning fish.
The cannery building site was originally a steamship dock dating back to the early 1900s. It has housed other seafood companies during the last century and was bought by Chatham Straits Seafoods, a division of Ocean Beauty in the 1980s.
Long before Ocean Beauty’s production facility was established in Petersburg, the Tlingits, indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast were the only inhabitants of Petersburg, until Norwegians migrated to the fishing village a century ago.
The cannery, one of only two in the community, has not operated since 2016. It was also closed in 2010 and also in 2012.
When it was operating, the seafood processing plant employed about 200 seasonal workers.
