Tech Experts Take Exports Accolades
Director of Operations Patrick Sirois accepted the Exporter of the Year award for beadedstream, and Shawn Williams, vice president of government affairs and strategy for Pacific Dataport, accepted the New Exporter award, presented by Rosita Johnson, interim chair of the Export Council of Alaska.
Photo Credit: Alaska Business
International trade has navigated some turbulence in the last eighteen months, reshuffling the usual lineup of Alaska’s biggest export partners. The tumult has not dampened the state’s overall exports of goods to overseas buyers, however, and that’s not even counting trade in services. High-tech service providers swept the annual awards from the Export Council of Alaska (ECA), showcasing how the state’s technology expertise can find applications worldwide.
beadedstream and Pacific Dataport
ECA, a nonprofit aligned with the US Commercial Service within the US Department of Commerce, presented its Exporter of the Year award to beadedstream. The Anchorage-based maker of remote sensors has been exporting since 2007, barely a year after the company was founded. From the first sales to Canada, now ten countries have bought both the precision instruments that beadedstream makes and the technical know-how to get the most out of them.
The Alaska Manufacturers Association nominated beadedstream for the ECA award. Earlier this year, the US Small Business Administration named beadedstream the Manufacturer of the Year for Alaska and for the Pacific Northwest region.
Patrick Sirois, beadedstream director of operations, says the equipment was born from the needs of the North Slope. “That experience gives an Alaska company something valuable to export. We understand remote operations because they are part of our everyday environment. The same systems developed for Alaska’s cold, rugged conditions can solve problems in remote and demanding environments around the world,” says Sirois.
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Shawn Williams, vice president of government affairs and strategy for New Exporter award winner Pacific Dataport, echoes that observation “Alaska turned out to be a pretty good laboratory,” says Williams. “If you can successfully deliver broadband to some of the most remote locations in Alaska, you quickly realize there are a lot of other places around the world facing very similar challenges.”
Pacific Dataport buys tranches of data usage from the Starlink and Eutelsat OneWeb satellite internet networks and resells them to customers. The company was originally more hardware focused: it launched the Aurora A4 satellite into geostationary orbit in 2023, and it built a large backhaul ground station in Nome. Williams says the strategy changed into leveraging billion-dollar orbital assets launched by other companies.
“We still want to connect places that are very difficult to connect. We simply discovered a better way to do it, and we discovered that the expertise we developed here in Alaska has value far beyond Alaska,” he says. “Our next chapter is about taking that experience to the rest of the world.”
As a new exporter, Pacific Dataport started last year with sales in Canada, and Williams says the next year will bring further sales in the Cook Islands and Australia.
The land Down Under has moved up in the ranks of Alaska’s biggest trading partners. For 2025, it was second only to South Korea, which bought $1.1 billion of exports from the state. Australia stood at $1 billion worth. “Australia has moved up substantially, not necessarily because of volume but because of the value of gold and minerals and such; they’re a processor for our ores,” notes Debra Franklin, state director for the US Commercial Service.
Japan ranks third, and China drops to Alaska’s fourth-biggest trade partner with $807 billion in goods sold in 2025. “That was impacted, obviously, by the different trade policies that are currently in effect. Historically, China was #1, Japan maybe #2 or #3, then South Korea,” says Franklin.
Canada is much lower, below some European trade partners. Franklin observes, “Switzlerland: that’s a lot about minerals there. Netherlands: that’s the gateway to Europe.”
$6.7B Worth of Goods
Despite the shakeup, Alaska’s overall trade volume is growing. With approximately $4 billion worth by mid-year, 2026 is on pace to surpass last year. “Things are going nicely for this year. I think we’re going to be ahead of last year. A lot has to do with minerals,” says Franklin.
Debra Franklin notes that the value of mineral exports, at this point in 2026, exceeds seafood, but those numbers could change by the end of the year.
Photo Credit: Alaska Business
Last year ended with approximately $6.7 billion worth of goods exported from Alaska. Of that, $2.6 billion was seafood, $2.3 billion was minerals, $1.2 billion was metals manufacturing, and $175 million was transportation equipment, with exported petroleum rounding out the top five. Among states, Alaska ranks about 40th or 42nd, according to Franklin.
The value of exported goods does not account for the value of services that Alaska companies sold internationally. That figure would have to include logistics, transportation, IT, finance, and architecture, says Acting ECA Chair Rosita Johnson.
To that list of services, Franklin adds more examples. “Understand that tourism and education are also involved in those service industries. Tourism, about 10 percent of their overall volume is international trade,” she says.
With the recognition of beadedstream and Pacific Dataport as leading-edge exporters, Alaska’s services sector is raising its profile on the world stage.
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If you’re in the City of Whittier, you get busy. The city has two separate transportation planning efforts underway, including a safety action plan under the federal Safe Streets and Roads for All initiative, which focuses on improving safety for pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, and emergency responders. The second is Whittier Moves, the city’s transportation master plan, which serves as the long-term roadmap for growth.