The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has awarded major bid solicitations for rockfish fillets, Pacific salad shrimp and Pacific whiting fillets as well as for frozen, wild shrimp.
On Thursday the agency awarded Oregon-based Pacific Seafood's Dulcich Inc. the majority of its contract for Pacific whiting and rockfish fillets.
The company was awarded around $15.2 million (€13.1 million) for 112,500 cases of the whiting and rockfish fillets to be used for the agency's National School Lunch program and Federal Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs across the United States.
Washington State-based Ocean Gold Seafoods received the rest of the contract for whiting and rockfish.
Pacific Seafoods also received the majority of the agency's total Pacific salad shrimp bid, which totaled nearly 20,000 cases for various sizes. Washington state-based Bornstein Seafoods also received a portion of that bid.
In a separate USDA bid released Thursday, the agency selected Louisiana-based companies Lafitte Frozen Foods, Ocean Select Seafood and Paul Piazza and Son for a contract worth nearly $25 million (€21.6 million) to provide wild, frozen shrimp to be distributed across several US states as part of its federal food and nutrition assistance programs.
Louisiana-based Ocean Select was awarded the lion's share of the contract, at around $20.8 million (€17.9 million), to provide cities around the United States with 136,350 cases of peeled and deveined packaged shrimp. The total contract was for 164,250 cases of various sizes of shrimp.
