1

Site Visit Report 

Alaska Seafood Processing Industry Petition Response 

Lindsay Guzzo 

Environmental Engineer 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency 

Region 10 Permits Division 

guzzo.lindsay@epa.gov

206-553-0268 

 Betsy Bicknell 

 Senior Environmental Engineer 

 Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) 

 betsy.bicknell@erg.com

 703-633-1612 

Plant Name Alaska Protein Recovery 

Plant Address Ketchikan, Alaska 

NPDES Permit # (discharge through Trident, permit # AKG520491 ) 

Maintains a permit in the event the barge moves to another location or 

is required to discharge while at Ketchikan 

Date of Visit Friday, August 13, 2010 

People Contacted Sandro Lane, M.Sc., Founding Partner and CEO

Seafood processed Salmon heads, viscera, trimmings, and other processing 

waste 

Products Edible-grade salmon oil 

Salmon protein hydrolysate 

Range of production volume 

(raw material processed) 

250 MT seafood waste per day in 2010; upgraded to 300 – 

350 MT per day for the 2011 season. 

Months of operation Salmon season (June through September) 

Discharge type Discharge clean up water via Trident’s outfall 

Website http://alaskaproteinrecovery.com

Alaska Protein Recovery (APR) operations are located on a barge that was tied up outside 

of the Trident plant in Ketchikan at the time of the site visit. Figure 1 is a picture of the 

barge. APR uses a novel enzymatic process to produce salmon protein hydrolysate and 

also produces food grade salmon oil from salmon processing waste (heads, frames, 

trimmings, viscera, etc.). 

Information presented in this report was obtained from discussions with Mr. Sandro 

Lane, APR Founding Partner, and CEO and reflects his opinions. The APR website was 

also consulted for some process details and photographs. 

APR History 

Sandro Lane operated a seafood processing facility in Juneau and sold the business in 

2002 to start APR. His goal is to recover value from the 40% (or more) of harvested 

salmon that ends up as waste. Instead of building a plant on land in one processing center, 

Mr. Lane and his partners bought a barge and installed the by-products recovery 

equipment. 

APR first began operations in Excursion Inlet and Petersburg in the first year of 

production (2003) and then moved to Sitka for the next three seasons. The salmon season 
2

in Excursion Inlet is short (one month) but as big as Ketchikan. Ocean Beauty operates a 

large cannery in Excursion Inlet, but because there is no place to tie up, the barge had to 

operate while at anchor. 

Initially, the raw material was dark, sexually mature fish with no value (e.g., dark chum). 

In 2002-3 APR processed mostly these low value carcasses. In 2004 and 2005, while in 

Sitka, APR began processing more waste (heads and guts) from salmon processing. The 

raw material changed but not the product: 

 Whole fish are 3-4% fats and oil 

 Heads are 10-15% fats and oil; and 

 Viscera are 1% or less fats and oil. 

APR operated the process in Sitka in 2004 – 2006. The processors in these locations did 

not appreciate the need to handle the salmon waste as a food grade product in order to 

produce high value by-products. They continued to treat the waste as garbage. The 

processors trucked and tendered the waste to the barge, but wouldn’t track the waste on 

their HACCP plans as a food item for further food processing on the barge. According to 

Mr. Lane, the some of the processors in Sitka may have been afraid of depending on 

someone else for managing their waste. Although the Best Management Practice Plans 

required by their NPDES permits say they will strive for recovery, they continue to 

discharge large amounts of fish waste into the harbor. 

APR’s first salmon protein hydrolysate customers wanted to use it for shrimp feed; 

however, because of the high fat content in the heads and guts, the product contained too 

much fat to use in the shrimp feed. As a result, APR now removes the oil from the heads 

and makes protein hydrolysate from the remainder. The oil is sold as a high value 

product. For retail, the oil is formulated as a soft gel and promoted for human 

consumption because of the omega 3 content. To start oil production, APR got some 

financing from Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board. They financed the decanter and 

centrifuge. 

In 2007 APR moved the barge to Ketchikan. In 2008 Trident became a partner. Chuck 

Bundrant, owner of Trident Seafoods, invested [Confidential Business Information (CBI), 

removed from this report]. to connect the Trident Ketchikan cannery to the barge. This 

includes a system to manage heads as food grade product and pump them to the barge. 

APR now takes 100% of the waste from Alaska General Seafood and Trident Ketchikan 

(south) which are located immediately adjacent to the barge. Waste is pumped from 

Alaska General to Trident and then from Trident to the barge. The heads are not chopped, 

but pumped to APR whole. Guts are ground prior to pumping. The salmon heads from 

Trident NorQuest (Ketchikan north) and E.C. Philips, two small plants located on the 

other side of Ketchikan are trucked to Trident and then pumped to the barge. At present, 

APR can’t take the guts from the two small plants because they decompose too quickly. 

Waste volume processed at APR is made up of heads (about 60%) and guts (30-40%). 
3

According to Mr. Lane, Ketchikan has traditionally been the largest salmon processing 

center in southeast Alaska. 

At the time of the site visit, APR had not found a market for the bone portion of their raw 

material. This waste is disposed of by Trident, who transports the material by boat for off 

shore (at-sea) disposal. Bone represents about 3-5% of the raw material on a dry weight 

basis. The remaining 95% of the incoming fish waste is used in the process. Marketing 

the bone as a bone meal product would not be feasible. It would require a bone dryer 

which would generate a lot of odor and require more energy than the value of the bone 

meal product. Bone meal is a very low value product so it is not worth the cost of energy 

to recover and dry the bone as a separate product. Mr. Lane mentioned he would like to 

hire a consultant to identify a cost-effective use for the bone. 

At the time of the visit Mr. Lane said that the salmon oil is being marketed as a 

nutritional supplement, sold at Costco. As for hydrolysate, few companies produce this 

product and there is no established market for it. He first marketed hydrolysate to fish 

food manufacturers. The hydrolysate was used to provide fish flavor to plant-based fish 

food so shrimp would eat it. As a result of the 2008-2010 international economic 

recession, production of farmed shrimp declined significantly and fish food 

manufacturers are not receiving orders for shrimp food. Consequently, as of 2010 they 

were not buying salmon protein hydrolysate. APR began selling the hydrolysate to 

organic fertilizer manufacturers in 2009. In 2010 they will sell all of their hydrolysate 

production to a customer who sells it to California farmers for use as an organic fertilizer. 

This customer will take all of the waste protein from the Trident Ketchikan cannery and 

Alaska General Seafood. 

It took seven years for APR to break even. In that time, they built a reputation for 

reliability. Mr. Lane believes that operating the hydrolysate process requires different 

skills than seafood processing. For example, by-product manufacturing has a control 

room while seafood processing does not. 

Mr. Lane credits the fact that his plant is on a barge to his survival. The barge was useful 

to explore which area would work best. Mr. Lane concludes that if he’d built his plant 

“on the beach” in Sitka, he’d be broke. 

Trident, Cordova By-Products Plant 

With the investment in APR, Trident has access to their technology and used it to build a 

new by-products plant adjacent to their cannery in Cordova. Trident invested [CBI, 

removed from this report]. in the new plant. Trident will run the by-product plant and APR 

will market the products. Mr. Lane said that the plant is large enough that in time it will 

be able to take much (perhaps most) of the waste generated by the Cordova seafood 

processors. 

The oil recovered by the Cordova plant is marketed by APR. They are marketing 

hydrolysate themselves. 
4

Raw Materials

APR only processes salmon. They can’t process halibut or black cod because many of the 

heads have stainless steel hooks. The hooks are not magnetic and can’t be detected by the 

metal detector. They must be removed by hand which is too labor-intensive (costly), so 

APR does not use halibut or cod heads. 

Tour of process

A detailed description of the hydrolysate production process, including a process 

diagram, can be found on the APR website http://alaskaproteinrecovery.com/ (and 

appended to this report). Figure 2 provides an overview of the barge interior. Figure 3

shows the hydrolysate plant. 

The protein product (hydrolysate) is not considered food grade. The oil product is food 

grade. The equipment in the barge (reaction vessels and piping) is stainless steel, so all 

APR processes meet food-grade sanitation requirements. 

Fish heads and other waste are pumped as separate streams into the barge from the 

Trident cannery. Fish heads are ground (Figure 4) then warmed in a heat exchanger.

From the heat exchanger, product flows through a mechanical refiner to remove bones 

and then to a horizontal centrifuge (decanter). The decanter separates solids from liquids 

(oil and water). The liquid flows through a second centrifuge that separates water and oil. 

The oil is collected in a [CBI, removed from this report]. then passed through a high speed 

polishing centrifuge to remove any remaining water or solids. After the polishing 

centrifuge, the oil is dispensed into SpaceKraft® totes for storage and transport to Seattle. 

The water from the decanter contains soluble protein and is known as stickwater. The 

stickwater is returned to the solids leaving the first centrifuge. The protein slurry is 

pumped into one of four 1600 gallon mix tanks. Each tank holds [CBI, removed from this 

report] material from about six totes (12,000 lb). Mr. Lane explained that the digesters are 

currently the choke point in the process. To increase capacity he may install two to four 

more tanks. 

Using enzymes and under controlled pH, the protein in the slurry is partially hydrolyzed. 

The hydrolysate is pumped through a 2-effect evaporator to reduce the water content of 

the hydrolysate to 56% - 58% in the finished product. The product is cooled and 

acidified. Finished product is stored in four 750 metric ton ballast tanks located on the 

barge. The product is transported to Seattle when the barge leaves Ketchikan for the offseason (September – May). 

The yield from 10 million pounds of fish waste is approximately 3 million pounds salmon 

protein concentrate and 300,000 – 400,000 pounds of oil. Oil production and quality 

varies from year to year. 

Raw material other than heads (i.e., guts) is ground (Figure 5) then fed directly to the 

digesters via a separate overhead line. This material bypasses the initial heat exchanger 

and deboner. 
5

The bone removed from the deboner is ground in an Autio grinder and then transferred to 

a boat for off-shore disposal. Blood and unrecoverable solids are discharged to a floor 

drain and flow the Trident grinder for disposal via their waste disposal system. 

Equipment and Crew

The barge depends on shore side connections for power, water, and sewage. It is 

equipped with a back-up generator. The barge is run by two-three person shifts; with an 

extra two people on the night shift for clean up. The barge is towed to Seattle for the 

winter. The crew also travel to Seattle and works through the winter pumping and 

processing the product and getting ready for the next season. 

Discussion 

There are no exhausts from the evaporators or heater. This closed system means little 

odor. 

When asked how small the process could be scaled and be operable, Mr. Lane suggested 

maybe 1⁄2 the size of the current operation, but this size may not be sufficient to recover 

the investment costs in a reasonable amount of time. For example, the APR process is not 

feasible for a processor the size of Taku in Juneau. 

For small plants, an alternative to building a recovery process may be freezing heads and 

transporting them to a central recovery operation. But freezing causes oxidation, and may 

degrade the oil. Although guts have some oil content, they decompose too fast (because 

of digestive enzymes and bacteria) and can’t be used for food grade products. Because of 

they contain acids, enzymes and bacteria, non-refrigerated guts must be used within 12 

hours of their removal from the fish. Dewatered and iced, they may be usable for 1-2 

days. An alternative to refrigeration may be pasteurization to kill bacteria and inactivate 

enzymes, possibly in an evaporator. 

The barge currently stores an unused whole fish processing line (from the time they made 

hydrolysate from chum) and also equipment for roe processing purchased from a plant 

that went out of business. This equipment will be removed to make space for up to four 

more digesters that will be added for next year. NOAA forecasts 2011 will be a very big 

year for pink salmon in Ketchikan. 

Mr. Lane has not sought financing from Alaska Industrial Development and Export 

Authority (AIEDA). They don’t provide grants, but guarantee loans. Interest rates on 

these loans are rather high. 

Mr. Lane did not know of any facility that digested its fish waste to recover methane. 

Using fish oil to make biodiesel generally is not cost-effective; however, using fish oil as 

a supplemental fuel makes sense in Akutan and other areas in the far western Aleutians 

where it is very expensive to ship diesel in and ship fish oil out. 
6

Energy use and availability

Mr. Lane reports that the barge is not a huge power user. It is equipped with a small 

diesel-powered steam generator for production which is not large enough to require an air 

permit. APR spends about $90/MT of product for diesel fuel for the steam boiler. 

The new by-products facility at the Trident Cordova plant has a higher energy demand 

because it is larger, operating several 100 hp motors while the largest motor on the barge 

is 50 hp. The barge draws approximately 500 amp. Electric power use does not vary with 

production. 

 

Mr. Lane noted that for communities where diesel generators are used for electric power, 

the power requirements of a by-products plant may over-tax the system. 

Future

Mr. Lane mentioned that Trident has several large processing plants including Naknek in

Bristol Bay at which it may build by-products recovery plants. Also, if APR built a shorebased by-product facility in Ketchikan, the barge could move to another location where 

Trident operates a large cannery. 
7

Figure 1. View of the Barge (from http://alaskaproteinrecovery.com/venturer retrieved 

October 27, 2010) 

Figure 2. Barge Interior Overview 
8

Figure 3. Overview of Hydrolysate Plant (from http://alaskaproteinrecovery.com/venturer

retrieved October 27, 2010) 

Figure 4. Grinding Salmon Heads 
9

Figure 5. Waste Grinding Overview 
10