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CVRF Platinum Fish Plant Will Remain Closed Through 2017

The Coastal Villages Region Fund announced today that it will not be operating its fish processing plant in Platinum this summer. The plant was built for a higher capacity than current fisheries can provide and was losing money.

“Change is hard, and we feel for the frustration of those who have benefited directly from our local fisheries in the past," said CVRF Business Development Director Angie Pinsonneault. "However, the cost is simply too great, and too few people benefited to justify continuing the program under current conditions.”

The company holds the Bering Sea fisheries Community Development Quota - or CDQ - for villages along the coast from Scammon Bay, up the Kuskokwim River to Oscarville, and down to Goodnews Bay. It owns a floating processor as well as crabbers and longline vessels. CVRF plans to lease its halibut quota share rather than make it available to village fishermen.

Last year the company did not disclose its decision to suspend its processing operations until June, leaving salmon fishermen with no place to sell their fish, and halibut fishermen with no quota share. A broker was interested in buying the fish, but an offer to lease equipment from CVRF was declined. The CDQ says that the door is still open for some sort of arrangement in the future.

CVRF says that the program amounted to a subsidy that only benefited a small part of the population it serves, and that there is already a lot of pressure on fish stocks.