Jan Tharp Archives - Saving Seafood

A Look at Women in Top Seafood Management on International Women’s Day

March 8, 2021 — Monday, March 8 marks International Women’s Day. To celebrate, we’re taking a look at women in top seafood management roles.

This past October the International Organisation for Women in the Seafood Industry (WSI) compiled data on how many women have leadership positions in the seafood industry. The study was only the third time that WSI had compiled data, but according to their findings, in 2020 women at top positions (including executives and board) grew to 14%, which is the “highest ever recorded.”

Read the full story at Seafood News

Plant-based tuna brand Good Catch takes on fish burgers, crab cakes with frozen line

July 10, 2020 — Gathered Foods, makers of Good Catch plant-based seafood alternative products, on Thursday, announced the launch of new frozen products that go beyond its tuna.

The company has launched New England Style Plant-Based Crab Cakes, Thai Style Plant-Based Fish Cakes, and Classic Style Plant-Based Fish Burgers.

This product extension is the second evolution from the plant-based seafood brand, according to the company.

The plant-based category — seafood and other proteins — is now worth $5 billion (€4.1 billion) and retail sales of plant-based foods grew 11 percent in 2019 versus 2 percent for the overall retail food market, according to figures from the Plant Based Foods Association.

Read the full story at IntraFish

Bumble Bee pushing past scandal and bankruptcy with new partnerships and products

March 6, 2020 — Bumble Bee has emerged from years of tumult with a splash: A new owner, new product packaging, new product lines, and, perhaps most significantly, an industry-first partnership with a plant-based food producer, Good Catch.

The San Diego, California, U.S.A.-based tuna company’s travails of the past couple years are well-known. The company was fined USD 25 million (EUR 22.3 million) after pleading guilty in a tuna price-fixing scandal in 2017, then entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy this past November. In January, the company was bought by the Taiwanese company FCF Co. for USD 928 million (EUR 826 million), with which it has a 30-year business relationship.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bumble Bee closes sale to FCF; CEO Jan Tharp calls it “an exciting new chapter”

January 31, 2020 — Bumble Bee Foods formally announced the closing of its sale to FCF Co. for USD 928 million (EUR 837.5 million) on Friday, 31 January.

The sale of Bumble Bee’s North American assets to the Kaohsiung, Taiwan-based tuna supplier Fong Chun Formosa (FCF) Fishery Company’s came after Bumble Bee filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy on 22 November.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Inside Bumble Bee’s long summer of selling itself

November 29, 2019 — On 21 November, the same day it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, Bumble Bee Foods announced it had entered into an agreement with FCF Co., its primary supplier of tuna, which agreed to acquire the company’s assets for approximately USD 925 million (EUR 836 million).

In a statement accompanying the announcement, Bumble Bee President and Chief Executive Officer Jan Tharp said she “anticipates that the transaction will move swiftly and close within 60 to 90 days.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Bumble Bee CEO Tharp sees bright retail future for tuna, but in pouches not cans

January 22, 2019 — Jan Tharp, the interim president and CEO of Bumble Bee Foods, sees tuna fish retail sales growing at a strong rate again but taking a different shape in the not-so-distant future, she told a packed room at the National Fisheries Institute’s Global Seafood Marketing Conference, in San Diego, California.

She was looking at charts of data from Information Resources Inc. (IRI), a Chicago, Illinois-based company that monitors retail sales trends. They showed total sales for seafood up 18%, from $9.8 billion in 2011 to $11.6bn in 2018, and the sale of tuna pouches up 12.3% in the past year.

The sale of seafood shelf-stable seafood was up only 2.9% in 2018, however. And household purchases of canned light tuna have dropped from 48.1% of tuna segment sales in 2014 to 39.3% in 2018, according to IRI.

Read the full story at Undercurrent News

Bumble Bee: Trump’s tuna tariffs ‘devastating’ for firm

September 21, 2018 — US tuna canning company Bumble Bee Foods warned the US Trade Representative (USTR) in a letter that the now-confirmed tariffs against imports of Chinese tuna would be “devastating” for the firm.

The tariffs — which will come into play on Sept. 24 at 10%, and then go to 25% on Jan. 1, 2019 — will hit US imports of yellowfin, skipjack, and albacore tuna loins, all of which are required by Bumble Bee’s Santa Fe Springs, California factory, wrote CEO Jan Tharp.

The tariffs, which were initially proposed by USTR on July 10, will hike the cost of raw materials, which in turn will “certainly lead to higher prices for US consumers”, Bumble Bee’s leader said.

“We are very concerned with the proposed tariff on tuna loins and the impact that these tariffs will have on our supply chain, global competitiveness, and US operations,” Tharp said. “The proposed tariff on tuna loins will have a devastating effect on Bumble Bee given that our business model is to import tuna loins for further processing and canning in the US by American workers.”

Read the full story at Undercurrent News