Novel Venture Nets Alaskans Biggest Catch of the Year: Selling Icebergs to Japanese

Men making $10 an hour are out gathering icebergs in chilly North Pacific waters, chopping the bluish ice into chunks, packing them in freezer vans and shipping them to Japan, where sales will hit $500,000 this year.

Entrepreneurs from Anchorage and Tokyo clinked glasses--filled with miniature icebergs floating in salt-free glacier melt--to seal a deal recently to send tons of glacier chunks sailing across the Pacific to Japan.

Takashi Ohmizu expressed amazement that even Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper got into the act by congratulating the businessmen on their new venture. But, after all, no one else had come to Alaska shopping for icebergs with hard, cold cash, and the governor and his director of international trade were pleased.

Complete With Certificates

The state of Alaska even came through with certificates, signed by the Commissioner of Commerce and Economic Development, that declare each kilogram bag to be “authentic Alaskan glacier ice.”

Why in the world would anyone do such a thing, and who would back it?

Mark Wilson, 38, a zoologist, and his chemist partner, have a little Anchorage company called Wetco that makes windshield washing fluid, antifreeze and bottled drinking water from glacial melt. They figured it would be nice to sell their Glacier Fresh purified drinking water abroad, and they enlisted Alaska’s foreign trade office to help.

“Water and ice are the only two natural resources in Alaska not locked up in leases,” Wilson said, settling on the plan to market both. “The state of Alaska stuck its neck out for us, and I was naive enough to think we could do it.”

“At the beginning of April, I knocked on the door at Wetco and now the containers of ice are heading to Japan,” said Ohmizu, 39, who, as managing director of newly formed Wetco Japan, sees bottled glacier water and ice as symbolic of Alaska’s pristine wilds and hopes that consumers see it that way too.

Solid Deal

Dai-ichi Kangyo Bank, the giant Tokyo bank, is backing the venture, along with several other large Japanese companies, putting it on solid ice financially.

Wetco Japan President Ryuji Nakamura, 43, said that he was “charmed by the austere glaciers and pure waters” and decided to pursue a “dream to bring to Japan a small piece of this great natural beauty.”

The partners also wanted to make money.

Since it costs $7,000 to send a 40-foot-long freezer van with 20 tons of ice from Anchorage to Japan, there has to be a decent return.

Wilson and his partners anticipate a lasting business for bottled glacier water, while selling glacier ice may be something of a novelty.

Sales of glacier ice for this already half-over start-up year may not alter the U.S.-Japan balance of trade, but the partners expect gross sales of more than $500,000.

Put in Gift Packs

Some of the glacial goodies will be put in gift packs with little hatchets to take advantage of Chugen, Japan’s summer gift-giving holiday, Ohmizu said.

The rock-solid bluish glaciers are made of fresh water, and Wilson said his $10 per hour workers are gathering only the finest and cleanest ancient ice, estimated to be 10,000 to 1 million years old.

Five percent of Alaska is covered by glaciers. Like prehistoric beasts giving birth, glaciers begin calving in May. Warming temperatures cause icebergs to break off the face of tidewater glaciers spread across the Gulf of Alaska.

“We capture them in nets,” Wilson said of the icebergs. “The first few pieces almost sank the boat. They are so dense and heavy.”

In Anchorage, the frozen catch is turned over to the Japanese, who put the vans on oceangoing freighters bound for Kushiro, where the goods are packaged.

100 Tons Shipped

In the last two weeks of May, the first 100 tons of icebergs were shipped. Wilson plans to ship 400 tons more this year, but his partners “are shooting for 2,000 tons of ice this year.”

Wilson said: “This is not something Alaska is going to run out of in the next eon.”