UniSea: first-class seafood.

• Author: Touza, Ann
• Position: UniSea Inc. - Corporate 100 Profile - Company Profile

In business, timing is everything. According to Dick Pace, president of UniSea Inc., good timing, the ability to adapt to changing conditions, and a little luck have helped this Dutch Harbor-based firm become one of the largest seafood processing companies in Alaska.

From its beginning in 1974 in the basement office of Pace's Woodinville, Wash., home, UniSea has grown to include two processing plants and two hotels in Dutch Harbor, a secondary processing plant and cold storage warehouse in Redmond, Wash., a secondary processing plant in Bellingham, Wash., and a crab processing barge anchored in St. Paul in the Pribilof Islands. UniSea also owns a 25 percent interest in Dutch Harbor Seafoods, which operates the mobile processors Galaxy and Omnisea.

Last year, nearly 144,000 metric tons of pollock, crab, cod, black cod, halibut and herring crossed the docks at UniSea, leading to the company's top ranking in terms of tonnage among Alaska seafood processors.

Despite the high volume processed, other factors -- low surimi prices, shortened pollock seasons and slashed opilio crab quotas -- have hit UniSea and other processors hard.

"This may be the beginning of the most difficult era ever" for the fishing industry in Alaska, Pace says.

"Before we had resource failures. Now we have not only a diminishing resource -- in terms of opilio, which is an important part of our business -- but we also have a severely over-capitalized industry," he says.

As a result, Pace is seeking to reduce costs to an absolute minimum, while at the same time working to increase production.

"I think that there are some who are participating in the shoreside industry that won't be here in a few years if things don't change," Pace says.

But he is confident that UniSea, having weathered the stormy seas of the Alaska fishing industry for the past 20 years, will survive this latest downturn.

UniSea is a wholly-owned subsidiary of one of Japan's largest fishing companies, Nippon Suisan Kaisha Ltd. Decisions on capital expenditures are made by the Nippon Suisan's board of directors, while management decisions are made by Pace -- a relationship he says has worked well.

"And quite frankly, in the last few years -- which have been pretty tough -- I feel fortunate that I have a well-financed, large organization that we are working for and with," he adds.

The story of UniSea is also the story of Dick Pace, one of the company's founders and president since its inception.

Growth of an...