Tuna Turnaround

In the mid-'50s, ruin seemed just around the corner for California's Van Camp Sea Food Co., the world's largest tuna-fish packer. Trapped between the rising costs of U.S.-caught tuna and mounting U.S. sales of Japanese brands cheaper than its Chicken of the Sea, the company watched its once hefty profits dwindle to the vanishing point. Recalls one senior Van Camp executive: "It was a question of either dying here or going elsewhere."

Van Camp's choice was to go elsewhere in search of cheaper labor. The first step was into American Samoa, where the company based a fishing fleet and built a cannery. Then, in quick succession, Van Camp bought a cannery in Puerto Rico, set up two freezing plants on Africa's Atlantic coast, and established four canneries in Peru and one in Ecuador. Meanwhile, the U.S. Government helped out by increasing the tariff on Japanese tuna. The result has been a sharp turnaround for Van Camp: in the past ten years, the company has doubled its sales to $73.5 million and turned its former losses into a 1962 profit of $3,200,000.

Instant Capitalism. In its foreign operations, Van Camp tries hard to make friends. It employs nearly 3,000 locally hired workers abroad, keeps its U.S. supervisory staff to a bare minimum. In both Peru and Ecuador, its canneries produce fish byproducts that the company sells at cost to supplement the low-protein native diet. In Ecuador the company has enabled local fishermen to own boats by giving them loans and taking a cut of each catch until the debt is paid off.

But to Van Camp President Gilbert Van Camp Jr., 41, the happiest result of his company's decision to go global has been its effect on the U.S. tuna fishing industry. To meet the competition of Van Camp's foreign fleets, West Coast tuna fishermen began to abandon their time-wasting practice of "horsing in" tuna with poles, re-equipped their boats with nylon seines that cut costs and increased the catch. They also held down wage demands. As a result, despite its burgeoning foreign operations. Van Camp now buys more West Coast fish than before.

Fishy Existence. The Van Camp family got into canning in Indianapolis in 1861, when Gilbert Jr.'s great-grandfather began packing tomatoes; subsequently his offspring began putting up pork and beans. In 1914 the Van Camps sold off the Indianapolis business--which ultimately fell into the hands of the Stokely family--and headed for California and tuna. Though the Stokelys retain the Van Camp name on their pork-and-beans can, the Van Camps no longer have any interest in pork and beans. But they own 60% of Van Camp Sea Food.

Since tuna consumption in the U.S. has been increasing at a steady 7% each year without any increase in prices (tuna is one of the few foods that cost the consumer less today than a decade ago), stocky Gilbert Van Camp foresees an ever brighter future for his company. His life is wrapped up in fish. His special pride is an 85-ft. power boat, the Vantuna, on which he likes to cruise with his wife and four daughters, aged 10 to 18. What do they do on their cruises? They fish. Boasts Van Camp: "We horsed in 30 tons of tuna last summer just on weekends."

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