Two bona fide fish tales of rapid growth.

• Author: Kleeschulte, Chuck
• Position: Company profile

IN THE EARLY 1980s expert after expert told members of the Alaska Legislature that the key to the state's economic growth was for Alaska to attract more value-added" industries that would process the state's natural resources rather than simply exporting them in the raw.

Terry Gardiner, a Ketchikan Democrat, listened during his term as speaker of the House in 1979 and '80. In 1981 he decided to act on the advice. SILVER LINING SEAFOODS

With his wife Linda, his legislative aide John Sund, a former gubernatorial resources assistant Bob Woldrup, and Ketchikan fisherman Dick Bishop, Gardiner, who's now 38, leased 1,500 square feet of Ketchikan warehouse space to form an Alaskan-owned seafood processing company. They called it Silver Lining Seafoods.

So far the story of their business has had a silver lining indeed. In seven years Silver Lining has grown from operations in a cubby hole to occupying a 28,000-square-foot plant between Tongass Boulevard and the waterfront in Ketchikan. It has grown from a business with 3 full-time employees to one with a workforce of 40 year-round. In July and August, employee ranks swell to 110. And Silver Lining, which had gross sales in 1981 of just a couple hundred thousand dollars, in 1988 recorded more than $ 10 million in sales - passing the threshold that traditionally has defined the industry's largest processors.

In 1986 Seafood Business listed the firm in 19th place among the 29 largest Alaska processors. While the magazine's 1988 listings still are'nt out, it probably has risen well into the top 15, based on salmon purchases last summer.

Last year Silver Lining made Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest growing privately held companies in America for 1987. In January it was cited in Nation's Business, the magazine of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as one of the more innovative marketers of seafood in America.

"We had two goals when we started. We wanted to create a year-round fish processing business and we wanted to find ways to add value to Alaska's catch to keep more of the economic value of our resources in the state. We have tried to hang on and grow. And we've done well at both over the years," says Sund, who served two terms in the state's House of Representatives (in Gardiner's old seat). He retired last year so he could devote more time to management of the company.

Silver Lining, which processed mostly salmon and a bit of shrimp in its first year, quickly diversified. The company now sells both fresh and frozen whole salmon. It also processes fresh and frozen halibut, sablefish (black cod), rock fish, prawns and dungeness crab. Recently the company began processing uni, or sea urchins, and geoducks. Both are popular in Japan.

Among its value-added efforts, the Ketchikan firm fillets salmon and markets salmon steaks. It smokes salmon that sells in both cans and vacuum bags, and it makes lox, another milder form of smoked salmon.

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