Dispatch

DISPATCH Peninsula Clarion The second biennial Global Food Alaska conference and trade show was hosted on the Kenai Peninsula last week. According to Robin Richardson with the Global Food Collaborative in Anchorage the purpose of the event was to bring together Alaska's supply chain of food, beverage and agriculture products to meet directly with buyers and be able to collaborate on opportunities so that Alaska is on the leading edge of competitive food producers in the world. Richardson believes there are many areas where Alaska can successfully enter the global market, "Certainly in our commercial seafood industry we are already in the global market place, but I feel there is a lot more opportunity in the way of value added and ready to eat products. It's a wild fishery and a fixed quantity so its a premium product and we need to be making the best value from that and doing more in our quality control," Richardson told the Dispatch, "But I also think that areas that hold future promise for Alaska which are yet to be tapped are nutraceuticals or what I call agri-products, items that can be made from the bounty of our land and marine resource. One example is the fish oil product that is made by Alaska Protein Recovery in Juneau and marketed in Costco that is made strictly from wastes at seafood processing plants," said Richardson. The trade show and conference was not only a chance for suppliers to meet with buyers, but to listen to them, "One half of each of the days was dedicated to listening to what's important to buyers with the idea being to be very market driven," said Robinson.