With its sea trials period successfully completed, the latest factory vessel delivered to the Russian Fishery Company has begun fishing around the South Kuril Islands.
Mekhanik Sizov is the fourth of the ST-192 design factory trawlers to be delivered to the company, and the third to be built at the Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg.
The lead vessel in the series, Vladimir Limanov, was built in Turkey, and was followed by Kapitan Vdovichenko and Mekhanik Maslak, which have since set records as the top catchers for herring and Alaska pollock in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Bering Sea.
The 108-metre Mekhanik Sizov is outfitted for production of 60-80 tonnes of fillets per day, and also has capacity for production of 80 tonnes of surimi and 250 tonnes of fishmeal per day. The ST-192 series trawlers are designed to each have an annual production capacity of 60,000 tonnes of fish, making them almost three times more efficient than the fleet of Soviet-era trawlers the new vessels are replacing.
Like its predecessors, this latest delivery takes its name from an industry veteran, in this case senior engineer Vladimir Sizov, who spent 30 years of his working life at sea.
