For starters, says Bob Poe, president and chief executive officer of AEDC, the Li Qiao Free Trade Zone in Beijing offers a great opportunity to have Chinese labor process a large volume of wild Alaskan chum salmon to produce once-frozen fillets for sale in China and many other markets.

Poe said the once-frozen chums would command a higher market price than chums that are frozen, then filleted in the Seattle area and refroze.

“Right now, a lot of the Yukon River chum are just swimming up the river, and there is no point in catching them because there is no processing capacity,” he said. “If you can ship it out and process it with lower-cost Chinese labor, it may work for the people catching the fish.”

Poe spoke on the heels of a newly signed memorandum of understanding between the AEDC and Beijing Liqiao Bonded Logistics Development Corp. The MOU was signed earlier in January in Beijing. Accompanying Poe on the trip were Curt Stoner of Totem Ocean Trailer Express, Dave Karp of Northern Air Cargo, Jac Gadwill of Kwik'pak Fisheries LLC, and Randy and Edna Crawford of Boreal Fisheries. Kwik'pak and Boreal Fisheries process Yukon River kings and chums.

“We would like to sell our Yukon chums to China,” said Randy Crawford, whose company has been buying fish from Yukon River harvesters in St. Marys for more than 30 years. “We think there is a market there. Right now most of their salmon is farmed salmon from Norway.

“Right now it is a concept,” Crawford said. “We haven't signed anything, but we want to see our local (St. Marys) economy survive. These people don't have the option of other employment. And this is wonderful fish. The world should be eating this instead of farmed salmon.”

Crawford said there were about 7 million pounds of Yukon chums locals could have harvested and his company could have purchased in 2006, except that they had no market for them, because they were competing again lower-priced hatchery and other Alaskan chums. “If we can save some costs somewhere, we will have jobs in rural Alaska we didn't have before — fishing, handling, air freight jobs and people who ice and truck the fish to the airport,” he said.

Poe said he felt the memorandum of understanding would open new market opportunities for Alaska seafood and logistics services in Beijing and increase business at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and the Port of Anchorage.

The Li Qiao Free Trade Zone, which is owned by the Beijing development firm, is located about 2 1/2 miles from the Beijing Capital International Airport. It is the first privately owned free trade zone in the People's Republic of China. The free trade zone currently serves as a manufacturing and warehousing area for major U.S. and Chinese corporations, including computer companies Apple and Lenovo. The same free trade zone houses the central information technology center that monitors every port in China for customs officials. A new and much larger Beijing Capital International Airport is under construction nearby.

Poe acknowledged the memorandum of understanding is a first step only.

“It's still an MOU,” he said. “Next comes a delegation of Chinese representatives to Anchorage, to see the airport and cargo facilities.”

If everything goes well, Poe said he hopes to see a test run of the fish to Beijing's free trade zone some time this year. “The idea makes a good deal of sense,” he said. “Yes, there are many details to work out.”

Poe won't be the one working out those details, however. He will be leaving the AEDC on April 1 to pursue what he described as several personal projects.

Poe said in a written statement in January that he plans to take on consulting projects and intends to complete a book about Alaska's economic history. Before working at AEDC, Poe served as the executive director of the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority and, simultaneously, the executive director of the Alaska Energy Authority.