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By WESLEY LOY
wloy@adn.com

Executives with one of Alaska’s largest seafood processing companies announced Sunday they intend to sell the operation to a California private equity firm.

Icicle Seafoods Inc., based in Seattle, is one of the biggest processors of Alaska salmon, halibut, pollock, crab and other seafood.

Executives said Sunday they have agreed to sell company to Fox Paine Management III, an investment company based near San Francisco.

The sale price was not disclosed.

Until last year, when it sold its shares, Fox Paine was a major owner of Alaska Communications Systems, an Anchorage telecom company.

The Icicle sale comes during the busiest time of year for the company, which is now cleaning, freezing and canning millions of migrating salmon caught by commercial fishermen around the state.

Icicle has seasonal peak employment of about 2,200 people and has annual revenue of about $300 million. The company operates packing plants in Bristol Bay, Seward, Kodiak’s Larsen Bay and Petersburg. It also operates a fleet of processing ships including the Northern Victor, which handles Bering Sea pollock and cod.

Outside, Icicle has a processing plant in Bellingham, Wash., and recently announced it had begun farming salmon and trout in Chile.

The Icicle sale is subject to stockholder and regulatory approval. Executives with Icicle and Fox Paine said they hoped to close the deal in 90 days.

This the second major Alaska seafood processor to change hands this year. In April, Seattle-based Ocean Beauty Seafoods Inc. announced it was selling a 50 percent stake in the company to Bristol Bay Economic Development Corp. of Dillingham.

Icicle’s president, Don Giles, said Sunday he and other top managers would be staying on to run the company. Fox Paine brings extra financial muscle to the firm, he said.

“It’s a good opportunity for the company to grow a lot faster than it otherwise would have, and it’s also a way to liquidate some of our long-term shareholders,” Giles said. “We’ve got a lot of things we want to do in Alaska and other places.”

Icicle’s rise is the stuff of commercial fishing lore in Alaska.

The company began in Petersburg in 1965 after a group of fishermen and employees purchased the local Pacific American Fisheries cannery. Since then, the company has become one of the highest-volume fish packers in Alaska, a state that accounts for more than half of all U.S. seafood production.

The bulk of Icicle’s owners today are employees who run the processing plants, Giles said.

Fox Paine invests in a wide range of companies, according to its Web site, from perfume and agricultural seed producers to insurance and high-tech firms.

Now it aims to land a big fish company.

“Icicle Seafoods has long been a leading operator in the Alaska and Pacific Northwest seafood industry,” said W. Dexter Paine III, president of Fox Paine III.