ANNONCER
Mikhail Ivanik, deputy head of Russia’s Federal Fisheries Agency (Rosrybolovstvo), told the International Fishery Congress currently taking place in Vladivostok that the fishing sector needs to make the transition to electronic logging and remote licensing.
The International Fishery Congress taking place in Vladivostok has a strong presence of Icelandic companies taking part, and Berglind Ásgeirsdóttir, Iceland’s Ambassador to Russia, held a keynote speech during the opening session that attracted significant interest.
Russian landings as a whole so far this year have totalled more than 3.5 million tonnes, which includes production of 64,000 tonnes of freshwater fish, according to the Fisheries Monitoring and Communication Monitoring Centre, which puts the current figures as being 4000 (+0.5%) tonnes up on last year’s.
Iceland’s Minister of Fisheries yesterday launched Knarr Russia. Earlier this year six specialist companies in Iceland established a platform, Knarr Maritime, to provide options for new fishing vessels, combining decades of experience. The new venture, Knarr Russia, is aimed squarely at the Russian market for new fishing vessels by setting up a subsidiary company in co-operation with Russian partner Raduga.
Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum, Ilya Shestakov, head of the Russian Fisheries Agency, announced that in the next five to seven years investment quotas will help to build more than a hundred fishing vessels and an estimated twenty shore processing plants.
Plans are in progress to establish a new shipyard in Russia’s Far East Primorsky Krai region, specifically to build fishing vessels.
A pair of Skipsteknisk-designed ST-116XL factory trawlers being built for Murmansk operator Nord Pilgrim are to be fitted with complete Wärtsilä propulsion packages.
The Leningrad Pella Shipyard near St Petersburg has signed contracts to deliver two freezer trawlers and a crabber for owners in Murmansk and the Russian Far East.
With the fishing industry in Russia going through reform and modernisation, the fleet being renewed long with port infrastructure and logistics, supply and the balance of imports and exports is set to change, according to the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries, Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ilya Shestakov.
Fishing in the Russian Far East presents plenty of challenges and Andrey Fatyanov, who skippers a freezer trawler owned by Interaros, the part of Russian Fishery Group, says that fishing life is never easy, but always interesting.