Original Peter Pan Seafood investor wins auction for troubled company's assets

Rodger May, an entrepreneur and fish trader, narrowly beat out another industry player, Silver Bay Seafoods, with his $37.3 million bid. The sale must still be approved by a Seattle court.

Original Peter Pan Seafood investor wins auction for troubled company's assets
 Skiffs sit on shore in the Southwest Alaska fishing town of King Cove. (Photo by James Brooks via Flickr under Creative Commons license)

This edition of Northern Journal is sponsored by The Boardroom, a shared workspace in Anchorage. The Boardroom just expanded from its original downtown location and opened a gorgeous second space in a convenient Midtown location. More information here.

One of the original investors in a troubled Alaska seafood company has narrowly outbid competitor Silver Bay Seafoods in an auction for the firm’s assets — including a major processing plant in the Alaska Peninsula village of King Cove.

Rodger May, an entrepreneur and fish trader, bid $37.3 million for the assets of Peter Pan Seafood, including two other processing plants — one in the Bristol Bay hub town of Dillingham and another in a remote part of the Alaska Peninsula called Port Moller.

May’s bid was $257,000 higher than the bid offered by Silver Bay Seafoods, a major Alaska seafood company that’s expanded rapidly in recent years.

Alaska fishermen and processing plants are in limbo as a state-backed seafood company teeters
“We are all sort of on pins and needles,” said a local official in King Cove, where fishermen and elected leaders are waiting to learn the fate of Peter Pan Seafoods’ shuttered plant.

The sale of Peter Pan, which operates primarily in Alaska with a business headquarters in Washington, isn’t final. A confirmation hearing in Peter Pan’s receivership case — a bankruptcy-like proceeding overseen by a Seattle court — is scheduled for Oct. 3.

May’s seafood trading company is one of three original investors who bought Peter Pan from a Japanese conglomerate in 2020. The other two investors are private funds, one run by Anchorage-based McKinley Capital Management and another led by Los Angeles-based RRG Capital Management.

May’s winning bid was summarized in a 115-page document filed in the case by the Los Angeles-based financial managers, the Stapleton Group, charged with managing Peter Pan’s assets through the receivership. It says May will pay $25.3 million of the purchase price in cash, with the rest to come from a credit to account for $12 million that May previously lent the company.

The document — a brief formal notice to the court along with a detailed purchase and sale agreement — leaves an array of unanswered questions. Those include whether and when fishermen owed money by Peter Pan could be paid off with proceeds from the sale.

The document also does not say whether any of the proceeds will go toward paying McKinley Capital Management, whose investment in Peter Pan was partially financed by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. — the agency that manages the state’s $79 billion oil wealth endowment. 

The sale documents also do not commit May to reopening the aging King Cove plant, which has been shuttered for months and is valued at just $200,000 by the sale agreement.

The closed Peter Pan Seafood plant in King Cove in July. (Marc Lester/Anchorage Daily News)

May also may face challenges in recruiting fishermen to sell their catch to Peter Pan’s plants.

He’s been criticized in recent weeks by former Peter Pan fishermen, some of whom have said they went unpaid by the company and filed liens against it.

Dozens of fishermen wrote an open letter last month saying that trust with May and his business "has been permanently broken" and that they "will not deliver fish or be in a business relationship" with him again.

May did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did an official from the Stapleton Group.

Northern Journal is funded almost entirely through readers' voluntary paid memberships. If you liked this story and want to see more like it, consider signing up by clicking the link above. If you're already a member, thank you.