A flow of second-hand French trawlers to Ireland has boosted business for French winch manufacturer Bopp as it finds itself with a new market on its doorstep.
‘All of these trawlers have Bopp deck machinery on board and so there’s a need for spares and servicing,’ Bopp’s Rémi Boennec said.
‘If someone needs a pump, we have it in stock, but it can take a week to ship it from Brittany to Ireland, so we saw very quickly that we needed to set up a network of dealers.’
Bopp’s network in Ireland and Scotland now included DR Diesel in Kilkeel, Christopher Hannon in Waterford, Gordon Ryan in Galway and in Scotland the company is represented by Jim Cowie in Peterhead.
‘Now we have a very good network, thanks to Antoine le Roux who set all this up,’ he said.
Bopp’s growing market in Ireland and the UK is far from being limited to the market for spare parts as several newbuilds for the UK fleet are being fitted with Bopp winches.
New trawlers from Macduff and Parkol are being fitted with Bopp winch systems that will provide the flexibility of operating as pair trawlers or alone with single or twin rig gear. Charlie McBride’s seine netter, being fitted out, is also being fitted with a set of new Bopp winches as part of its extensive refit.
‘We’ll be at the Skipper exhibition in Aberdeen, and we’ll have the winches for the Audacious on the stand with us,’ Rémi Boennec said.
