“Chuck was a humble and conservative fisherman,” his son Joe Bundrant says. “He grew up on a farm and learned to save in the good years to carry the bad years.”

And there were bad years. Bundrant recalls, “He had no distribution network—he had to build it through sheer grit and determination. In the beginning, dad caught, processed, and sold crab to restaurants and neighbors.”

Bundrant, now the CEO of Trident Seafoods, says his father didn’t set out to build a large company.

“He just wanted to do honest work, focus on stakeholders, reinvest, and develop people,” he says. “He believed if you did those things well, the rest would follow.”

And it did.

The privately held American corporation is the nation’s largest vertically integrated seafood company. It owns a fleet of vessels working in Alaska waters and sixteen shore plants and support operations in Akutan, Anchorage, Chignik, Cordova, Dillingham, Dutch Harbor, False Pass, Ketchikan, Kodiak, Naknek, Petersburg, Sand Point, St. Paul, and Wrangell.

Trident operates ten Lower 48 locations, including processing and production plants, shipyards, an innovation center, and a Seattle support center. The company also has eighteen international value-added processing plants and sales offices, and it recently established a branch office in Tokyo, Japan, to serve customers there.

Its brands include Trident Seafoods, Louis Kemp, Alaska Pure Omega, Alaska Naturals, and Pure Catch.

In the Alaska Business 2023 Corporate 100, ranked by the number of Alaska employees, Trident Seafoods came in third. Trident employs some 9,000 people, including seasonal workers.

“We believe that investing in people and infrastructure are synonymous with integrity,” says Bundrant. “Trident exists to serve, and we ensure our longevity and our continued ability to serve through these reinvestments.”

Chuck turned the company over to his son in 2013. Thanks to Chuck, Bundrant was no stranger to the sea, having gone fishing with his father since he was 13, working the Bristol Bay salmon season in the summer.

Bundrant says he often thanks his dad for being so hard on him and teaching him the value and rewards of hard, honest work. He recalls his father’s adage, “We may not be the smartest, and we may not be the best looking, but nobody will work harder than us.”

In 2021, Chuck passed away at age 79 at his home in Edmonds, Washington. In a New York Times obituary, he was lauded as the “Henry Ford” of Pacific fisheries for his initial innovative approach to processing crab on board F/V Billikin.

Essential to Chuck’s vision was his respect for people, also something that Bundrant carries on.

“Our appreciation for the many stakeholders who got us to where we are today” is part of that vision, says Bundrant. “Our philosophy has always been to acknowledge the unique needs of all stakeholders and to serve each to the best of our ability. Without the efforts of all our stakeholders, Trident would not be celebrating today.”

Celebrations kicked off on January 31, which would have been Chuck’s 81st birthday.

Trident plans to celebrate with as many employees and communities as possible around the world. In Alaska, its executive team celebrated in February and June with employees and communities in two week-long trips to most of its locations.

“Our anniversary is centered on two sentiments: appreciation and optimism,” Bundrant says.

Bundrant says there are four rules for family members who want to work at Trident:

1) Get a college education; 2) spend at least two summers in Alaska (because if you haven’t stood on a cold, wet boat then it’s difficult to truly understand what employees go through); 3) do something outside of Trident Seafoods before coming into the company; and most importantly, 4) have the heart of a servant leader.

Bundrant left for seven years, and Chuck called him back during the ConAgra Brands deal in 2006, when ConAgra Foods of Nebraska sold all of its seafood businesses to Trident.

The company’s largesse in giving back to its communities is well known.

In 2022, Trident donated 14,681 pounds of seafood to the Southeast Alaska Food Bank in Juneau through the non-profit organization SeaShare, which provides seafood to food banks throughout the United States.

In 2019, Captains for a Cure raised $380,000, exceeding its goal of $250,000, for a research grant on Parkinson’s disease with the help of Trident and in honor of Chuck, who was diagnosed with the chronic condition in 2006.

In April, wild Alaska pollock, considered one of the world’s most sustainable proteins, was named the official whitefish of Climate Pledge Arena and the Seattle Kraken hockey team. It is being featured on menus throughout the arena.

Trident, a member of the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, announced its partnership with the arena and team and pledged to bring 32 million sustainable seafood servings to people in need by 2024 through its partnership with SeaShare.

Bundrant says he learned from his father: “The most important things in life are faith, family, hungry, and humble, and to serve others every day.”

“It’s important to think long-term in this industry,” Bundrant says. “We don’t make decisions for this year or next year. We make decisions for the next generation.”

In 2022, Trident started work on building a 1,500-foot sheet pile dock in Unalaska’s Captains Bay. The sheet pile dock will support a new processing plant in Unalaska, which was originally slated to break ground in 2024; in August the company announced the groundbreaking is postponed until 2025. The company has projected a three-year build plan, which means the new processing plant will be operating in 2028 at the earliest. According to an August release, “This decision reflects an unprecedented confluence of high inventory levels, low consumer demand, and aggressive price competition in global markets. These forces have driven prices down rapidly and across species—all while high global inflation and rising interest rates are driving up operating costs.” Bundrant commented in August: “I’ve been in the industry a long time and I’ve never seen markets like this.”

The new processing plant at Captains Bay will replace Trident’s existing facilities at Akutan, a move the company recognizes will have a significant effect on the village. “We’re working closely with the village of Akutan to soften the impact of Trident’s eventual move to Unalaska,” Trident Executive Vice President of Public Affairs Stefanie Moreland explained in August.

Dutch Harbor, connected to Unalaska by a bridge, has been the number one commercial fishing port in the nation by volume of landings for the past twenty years. Its largest fishery is pollock, with catches of more than 1.5 million metric tons per year.

“That’s why, for the next five years, our focus will be on reinvesting in vessels and facilities. We want to invest in the infrastructure to support the business for years to come,” Bundrant says.

The Unalaska project will put Trident Seafoods cheek to cheek with Unisea, which has bunkhouses, cold storage, and processing facilities across that bridge in Dutch Harbor. It is a subsidiary of the Nissui Corporation of Japan.

However, Trident Seafoods sees the construction at Captains Bay as a chance to make a processing plant that is modern, efficient, and environmentally responsible.

“How we conduct business and how we treat people will never change; it’s ingrained in who we are,” Bundrant says. “What will change is the science and technologies required to continue advancing the fishing industry. And we will be at the forefront of that change. We are facing big challenges, and we will meet these challenges by working with our stakeholders, as we have always done. Not many companies make it to fifty years, and we don’t take anything for granted.”