Internal Update on NESI

Employees learned Friday that our company has become a global business. COO Terry Downes announced that Sealaska has acquired New England Seafood International Limited (NESI), which is based in London.

This is a significant expansion of Sealaska’s footprint, and it also expands our potential impact on one of our highest priorities – promoting ocean health.

Sealaska and NESI are like-minded organizations when it comes to tackling tough challenges like climate change and the preservation of a healthy global seafood stock capable of feeding the planet’s burgeoning population. How do we make a limited and somewhat fragile resource go farther? We do it through careful and strategic development of products that not only add value, but also increase the ways we can reduce waste by using every part of every fish.

The alliance allows NESI’s customer base in the UK and Europe, which includes retailers and leading food-service brands, to benefit even more from Alaska’s premium wild seafood, while it enables Sealaska to benefit from NESI’s market knowledge and deep expertise.

Our combined operations benefit Sealaska shareholders and beyond, because we share a longstanding commitment to ocean health and responsible use of resources. Both Sealaska and NESI were founding members of the Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability (GDST), an international, business-to-business platform dedicated to a growing consumer demand for transparency when it comes to the origin of seafood products and eliminating reliance on unethical and illegal labor practices throughout the seafood supply chain.

Encouraging increased consumption of seafood helps address climate change because the harvest and production of seafood products uses less water and energy than other sources of protein, and because seafood is among the most nutritious sources of protein, according to the University of Washington’s Sustainable Fisheries research collaborative.

We are embracing our Native values related to stewardship and Haa Shuká, or honoring our ancestors and our descendants through responsible and profitable business practices. We’re proud of this step for Sealaska and hope you’ll be excited to share the news with others.

If you’d like to read a more detailed story about this acquisition and understand more about our two companies, please check out the article published online here, and click through to visit NESI’s website and that of the GDST.

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