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BRISTOL BAY - A major high-end salmon processor has partnered with a small Bristol Bay community to create the newest company to join the wide array of fish processors that do business in Bristol Bay.

Copper River Seafoods has put up $2 million and the Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. has matched that $2 million to create a new company called Togiak Seafoods. BBEDC's share of the money was given to the Traditional Council of Togiak, which is one of its members. That makes the new company a 50-50 partnership between the council and Copper River Seafoods.

The ultimate goal is to refurbish an existing building in the city of Togiak for use as a processing plant, but the facility was not ready this season.

That's not stopping the new company from buying Togiak fish.

Instead of processing the fish in Togiak, the company is icing the fish and quickly flying them to the Copper River Seafoods processing facility near downtown Anchorage.

Joe Egemo, chief operations officer for Copper River Seafoods, said in mid-July that fishing started to pick up in Togiak Bay.

"We are starting to get the volumes we need, and we have been keeping our Hercules aircraft full, which haul out 42,000 pounds per hop out of Togiak back to Anchorage," Egemo said.

The plan is for Togiak Seafoods to continue buying sockeye, coho, kings, and chums through about mid-September. The company is paying a dollar a pound for kings and sockeye delivered to its dock and 95 cents for fish that that are tendered. The price for chums is 20 cents. However, the company is only buying chilled and bled fish.

The fish being delivered to Togiak Seafoods are not destined for a can or headed and gutted. Rather, the company will process them into fillets for sale to the fresh salmon markets in Lower 48 states.

In 2010 the company hopes to have its processing facility in the city of Togiak up and running with both fillet lines and heading and gutting lines that will be manned by Togiak area residents.

Jonathan Forsling is the Traditional Council of Togiak representative on the management team for the new company. He believes a processing plant in the city of Togiak has the potential to greatly improve the local economy.

"Our main goal is to stimulate the economy by creating jobs here in Togiak as well as bringing the price up for fishermen and having jobs available throughout more of the season," Forsling said.

Forsling said slowly but surely, many of the local Togiak area fishermen have begun to accept the new company and adapt to the new chilling and bleeding requirements.

"This is actually the first year that the icing and bleeding program has really begun to take off, and with everything, it just takes time for the fishermen to get used to the extra time it takes to bleed a fish and the extra time it takes to put them on ice," Forsling said.

Copper River Seafoods' monetary investment into Togiak Seafoods is around $2 million, but Egemo noted that the investment is much larger when the operational knowledge that has been brought into the community is considered.

As an example, he cited the city-owned 10-ton ice-making plant which sat unused and broken for years until engineers with Copper River Seafoods got it up and running. The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association put up more than $7,000 to help rehab the ice machine, and the organization's executive director, Bob Waldrop, took a tour of Togiak Seafoods operations on July 23.

"I couldn't be happier than I am right now to see what Copper River Seafoods and the Traditional Council of Togiak has done over here," Waldrop said. "It's pretty phenomenal, and we are very proud to have played a small part in attracting extra processing capacity to the Togiak area."

All the players in Togiak Seafoods agree that the venture would not have gotten off the ground without the financial support of the BBEDC. Robin Samuelson Jr. is the BBEDC president and CEO. He got his first chance to see the Togiak Seafoods operation on July 23. He believes the investment helps BBEDC further fulfill its mission to promote economic growth and opportunities for residents of its member communities.

"It's important for the competition," Samuelson said. "Togiak Fisheries has been on limits with fishermen before. The fishermen are getting a real good price. The product is iced and it's going out of Togiak as a No. 1 product and that's what it's all about."

Togiak Seafoods is not the only processor buying fish out of the Togiak District. On the other side of Togiak Bay is a processing facility known as Togiak Fisheries, which has been operating for years. That facility is owned and operated by North Pacific Seafoods, based in Seattle.

It's anticipated that some of the other processors in the Bay will be participating in the small Togiak fishery by sending tenders over to Togiak Bay now that a transfer restriction has been lifted.

While Togiak Seafoods might be the newest processor in the Togiak area, there was a surprise entrant on July 22 and 23. Coastal Villages Seafoods, part of the CDQ group Coastal Villages Region Fund, sent a tender into Togiak Bay to buy fish to process at its new multimillion-dollar processing plant in Platinum.

Stuart Currie, general manager for Coastal Villages Seafoods, confirmed the new plant has been processing fish since around June 22. The company decided to buy fish from Togiak because of the short 15-hour running time for their tender back to the plant in Platinum, he said.

"We are kind of at a slow point and are between fisheries in the Kuskokwim region," Currie said. "Our plant is not being used to full capacity right now, so we thought we would come to Togiak and see what it looks like over here. This is a little bit of an adventure for us."