Local News in Brief : Proposal to Build Cannery

The Port of Los Angeles is negotiating with a company that proposes to build a $12-million, state-of-the-art fish cannery on Terminal Island that would package mackerel and compete in Asian markets, something other local canneries have been unable to do.

The Terminal Island canning industry has suffered severe setbacks in recent years, as canneries have closed due to foreign competition. The three remaining canneries package tuna, mackerel and pet food, mostly for sale in the United States.

The proposed plant would be among the most automated on the West Coast, according to a spokesman for Los Angeles Harbor Fisheries Inc., which wants to begin construction next month.

Its proposal calls for a 72,000-square-foot, two-story facility that would be capable of processing between 300 and 400 tons of fish a day, primarily for consumption in the Philippines and the South Pacific, including Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Those markets are now being supplied mainly by canneries in Japan, Korea and Thailand, where labor is less expensive.

The spokesman said the new cannery would employ between 50 and 150 workers, using machines to decapitate, gut and fillet fish--jobs performed by people at other plants.