Alaska General Seafoods

Egegik, AK is a small village of just over 100 inhabitants located in the north-east portion of the Alaskan Peninsula. The village of Egegik was established at the mouth of the Egegik River on the southern bank in the late 1800's. Similar to the neighboring city of Naknek, the climate in Egegik can be very extreme, with summer temperatures ranging between forty-four to sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit and winter temperatures dipping as low as twenty-four degrees Fahrenheit below zero and rising to as high as forty degrees above zero.

During the months of June and July each summer, the Egegik fishing district is a prime location to harvest an abundance of sockeye salmon traveling through Bristol Bay to spawn in the Egegik River. In 2001, the official population of Egegik was 116 people. During the salmon season, the population can swell to over 2,000 people when including fishermen and cannery workers. The Egegik economy, is primarily dependent on commercial fishing and fish processing.

The first commercial salmon facility to be built in Egegik was a saltery established by the Alaska Packers Association in 1895. In the early 1930s, H.N. Evans built another saltery on the current Alaska General Seafoods (AGS) site. In the early 1940s Evans sold the saltery to Lloyd Tyo, and soon after, Tyo joined with Jack Hanover, Walt Peterson and the San Juan Fish Packing Co. to build a cannery on the site. In the early 1960s the San Juan Fish Packing Co. sold the facility to the New England Fish Co. (NEFCO). NEFCO operated the facility until the late 1970s, after which time Ocean Beauty purchased the operation. Ocean Beauty eventually partnered with the Diamond E operation (also located in Egegik) and moved the canning lines from the Ocean Beauty plant to the Diamond E plant. Ocean Beauty converted the facility to a fish camp. In 1986 Nelbro Packing Co. purchased the facility and continued to operate it as fish camp. A new bunkhouse and warehouse were built by Nelbro to accommodate the growing fishing fleet. In 1999, Kanaway Seafoods purchased the assets of Nelbro Packing Co. and operates the Egegik fish camp under the trade name Alaska General Seafoods. The AGS fish camp provides housing, messhall, boat storage and repair services to its independent fishing fleet.