Through Treacherous Waters to Sustainable Canneries: Kathy King’s Journey with Ocean Brands
When you sit down with Kathy King, Vice President of Procurement Strategy at Ocean Brands, you don’t just meet an executive with decades of experience. You meet someone whose story is woven with family migrations, melting pots of culture, and summers spent in gum boots working on the cannery floor. “I was six months old when I came to Canada,” Kathy said. “My mom was from Hong Kong, my dad from Mumbai, and all my siblings were born there. Our family table was always a mix of rice, chow mein alongside turkey and curry for Thanksgiving.” That table, embedded with culture, set the stage for a career in seafood where identity, family, and the ocean meet in ways both personal and professional. Ocean Brands began as Ocean Fisheries, a family-run seafood company on Commissioner Street in Vancouver.
For Kathy, her start wasn’t glamorous. At 16, her cousin picked her up and handed her a pair of boots. Then, she was dropped at the plant. “It was a summer job, not a career vision,” she laughs. “But it paid for my school supplies and clothes. And eventually, after post-secondary, when I saw a job opening, I thought I knew that company. And I’ve basically been here ever since.” Over several decades, she worked her way from quality control to imports, and finally to procurement leadership. Through it all, Kathy saw Ocean Brands evolve from a local fish processor to a global company navigating the complexities of sustainability, consumer expectations, and the stark reality that oceans are not infinite.
Culture, Community, and Change
Kathy’s leadership isn’t just about numbers, it’s about people. Raised in East Vancouver’s multicultural neighborhoods, she never felt like an outsider. That ease with diversity became a strength in leadership, whether navigating cultural nuances with suppliers or building inclusive teams. “When I first worked in the cannery, there were Japanese crews, Chinese crews, everyone. You always felt like you were part of a group. That carries through today.” Her Chinese and Indian roots, intertwined with her Canadian upbringing, gave her not just resilience but perspective. This understanding of adaptation, blending traditions, and navigating identity mirrors the work Ocean Brands does, specifically, holding onto tradition while adapting to a fast-changing world.
The Longevity of Fishing
In seafood procurement, Kathy is aware that choices are never simple. It’s not about negotiating contracts and securing supply, it’s about ensuring that fish will still swim in the future. “You can sit on the sofa and say sustainability is the right thing to do. But honestly, if we deplete the oceans, then we’re putting an end date on our company. There’s no seafood company without seafood.” This sentiment provides a clear insight into Ocean Brands’ sustainability journey. The company became a certified B Corp in 2020, embedding values of community, climate, and ocean health into its operations. It has also committed to sourcing MSC-certified fish wherever possible, ensuring independent verification that fisheries are well-managed, stocks are healthy, and ecosystem impacts are minimized. But Kathy doesn’t sugarcoat it: “The seafood industry is old, and change is [evident] [yet] slow. It’s not perfect,” she admits. “Some practices aren’t the best, but you’ve got to keep trying. Change won’t happen if you’re just sitting around not doing anything.”
Fishing Practices Beyond Ocean Brands
The global tuna trade faces constant pressure; Modern tuna fishing uses FADs (fish aggregating devices) to concentrate tuna, which increases efficiency but can also lead to bycatch of sharks, turtles, and juvenile tuna. Poorly managed FADs can contribute to plastic pollution along coasts. To address this, organizations like the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF) and various regional fisheries bodies promote non-entangling, biodegradable FADs, electronic monitoring, and retrieval programs. Some fisheries pursue pole-and-line or free-school fishing methods, praised for being more sustainable limiting but limited in scale. For consumers, labels are imperative; The MSC blue tick and claims such as “FAD-free” or “pole-and-line” indicate that companies are prioritizing the health of their fish alongside oceans. As with all procurement decisions, the system is not perfect, but each purchase pushes supply chains in a positive direction.
Looking Ahead: Oceans in the Balance
The future Kathy envisions for Ocean Brands is just as sustainable as the work she’s doing there today. It’s about measuring carbon footprints and actively improving them. It’s about reducing single-use plastics in packaging, with partnerships like CleanHub helping to intercept plastic before it reaches the sea. It’s about collaborating with industry peers through the Seafood Task Force, which has a better global oversight. These initiatives aren’t easy, or cheap, but Kathy insists they are necessary. “Some suppliers are farther ahead than we are, and we lean on them. Others are learning, just like us. But at the end of the day, you can’t have a future seafood company without healthy oceans. That’s what keeps me going.” After several decades in seafood, Kathy speaks with humility. She understands how uncertain and often painfully slow the work of sustainable seafood can be. Yet, her story is deeply human, a story of migration, blending cultures, life on the cannery floor, canneries, and the belief that what we consume today should still be available for future generations.
