The recent announcement from Tri-Marine International (TMI) about its new hire, Matt Owens, for the newly created position of director of environmental policy and social responsibility, shows the company is making a clear choice in the direction it is taking for the future.
Matt Owens
Being the world’s largest tuna trading company, with involvement in tuna fishing and processing, and a turnover over one billion dollars, TMI is now stating on its website that it is on the forefront of trying to sustainably manage tuna as a natural resource.
TMI is also part of the ISSF, the tuna industry seafood sustainability organization, which has said in recent presentations that its aim is to work towards MSC certification of the various global tuna fisheries.
Matt Owens, in his former job as sustainable seafood consultant with Fishwise, was closely involved in working with some US and also EU retailers. One of those retailers was Safeway USA, which last year signed a supply agreement with TMI on FAD-free skipjack tuna for its own private label. In 2012 Greenpeace rated Safeway as the number one US grocery on seafood sustainability. Part of the policy of Safeway has been to sell MSC sustainable certified seafood, besides its involvement in several fisheries improvement projects.
He will work at Tri-Marine’s cooperate headquarters located in Bellevue, Washington.
With the hiring of Matt Owens, and other new employees with backgrounds in Pacific tuna management, there are indications that the company might have ambitions to follow the same route as Pacifical cv, the tuna marketing company of the PNA countries. Pacifical is responsible for the marketing of the MSC certified free school caught skipjack tuna caught in the PNA waters. Many leading retailers globally have already shown interest in MSC certified skipjack tuna from the Pacifical.
The hiring of Owens, the commitment that TMI made within the ISSF in working towards MSC, and the growing call by its customers for MSC tuna, could indicate that Tri-Marine might soon be promoting MSC in the Pacific Ocean, its major operational base.