Ward Cove Packing Co. officials said this week the seafood giant plans to operate its Excursion Inlet cannery "full scale" next summer, despite some of the worst market conditions in decades.

The demise of the 80-year-old cannery was included in recent rumors circulating that a substantial portion of Ward Cove Packing had recently been purchased by another Seattle-based company.

The facility’s closure would be a financial disaster for the Haines Borough, which relies on the plant to provide more than $200,000 in revenues annually in state raw fish taxes.

Excursion Inlet manager Gary Moore said while the company is considering closing its Ketchikan cannery, which has operated since 1912, the Excursion Inlet plant will remain open.

"We’re in a strategic position in Excursion Inlet and it would be the wrong move. If the prediction was that all the fish were going to be caught in Ketchikan, then it would be different," Moore said.

The industry is experiencing hard times, caused in part by a glut of canned salmon, the lowest canned salmon prices in years, and projections of another record pink salmon run next summer.

The University of Alaska predicts a record 50 million pink salmon return in Southeast Alaska in 2002. Moore said the Excursion Inlet plant is positioned well because most of the run is projected to return to the north end of the Panhandle.

"We’re looking at mounting as large an operation as we can at Excursion next summer. We’ve got three cannery lines and we can put up more volume at Excursion than in Ketchikan," Moore said.

The predictions for a big run next year come after the Excursion Inlet plant’s largest-ever pink salmon pack.

Moore said world prices for canned pink salmon are the lowest in decades, with inventory on hand to last at least a year. "At the rate we’re selling now, we’ll have enough to take us into 2003. There is a holdover from 2001 that won’t be sold. It’s a serious situation."

Ward Cove Packing Co. controller of operations Dave Forbush said rumors of Ward Cove’s imminent sale are always circulating around the Seattle waterfront, but that the one that hit Haines last week—that 20 percent of the company had been carved off—are untrue. "Not unless it happened while I was away for lunch," Forbush said.

Forbush said while the company has about a half dozen old cannery sites in central and western Alaska for sale, local properties, including the Letnikof Cove cannery, are in no danger of being sold or closed.

"To my knowledge, we haven’t had any offers on Letnikof. Anything is for sale for the right price, and we do have a multitude of property around the state. As far as Excursion goes, it’s not in our plan under any circumstances not to operate Excursion Inlet cannery."

Moore said rumors of the sale of the company may have started in Craig last summer, when the yacht owned by Trident Seafoods president Chuck Bondrant was sighted anchored in a cove adjacent Ward Cove property on Prince of Wales Island.

Forbush said speculation is rising around the industry as companies look to consolidate canning, cold storage, tendering and other operations to save money in what is believed to be a bleak 2002. "We’ve been talking with people about joint ventures, or consolidating some operations just to survive."