Samoan Canneries Shutdown Due To Small Albacore Catchesff

Faced with poor catches of white meat tuna, the two canneries are shutting down production, starting this week with COS Samoa Packing. Samoa Packing’s general manager Herman Gebauer said the Atu’u-based company started the down time on a Tuesday after the July 4th (paid) holiday until July 7th (Friday). “Production will resume a week later,” he said.

Mr. Gebauer and StarKist Samoa’s general manager, Brett Butler, both said that the canneries are facing a “scarcity of mostly white meat tuna” or albacore. “Catch rate for white meat is low,” Mr. Gebauer said. During down time, Mr.Gebauer indicated that the company will put in new packaging equipment “to make production more efficient and smoother.”

Mr. Butler said StarKist Samoa announced to employees on a Thursday their plans to shutdown production, which would last for two weeks. He said production would resume next week, July 25.

During the shutdown, Mr. Butler said the company will be working on “capital projects at the maintenance level” and it also hopes to unload fish at the same time in order to prepare for production to resume.

The cannery shutdowns come two weeks after Impress Samoa, the tuna can manufacturing company for the canneries, laid off 12 people. An industry source indicated that the employees laid off were “part of the cut-back” implemented because "activity has slowed-down" at the Satala-based plant and it couldn’t continue to maintain the workforce of about 100 people.

Local industries providing support services for the canneries are always concerned when the canneries are closed because it affects their own workforce.