Liegruppen and Salt Ship Design have won the Nor-Fishing Innovation Award for 2018 for their innovative high-tech, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly fishing vessel.
The LNG-powered pelagic vessel Libas is due to be delivered to Liegruppen by the Cemre shipyard in Turkey, built to a design by Salt Ship Design.
The jury noted in its introduction that the winner had great potential to influence the market in a positive direction. Salt Ship Design emphasised in its speech that the innovation process had been both special and challenging.
‘We were contacted by a fishing company that wanted the most environmentally friendly vessel in the world, operating on LNG, with electric winches – and it needed to have yacht lines. In addition, he wanted production started in two months. In other words, it has been a fun and unique innovation process,’ said Salt Ship Design’s chairman Egil Sandvik.
‘We’ve spent a lot of time and energy on this project, including many hours of work, so it’s great to have a reward for your work,’ he said, adding that winning the prize is an honour and emphasising that both the fishing company and other participants in the project play crucial roles.
‘It’s the shipping company that takes the risk in such a project. In addition, sub-contractors have been flexible and our partners are hard-working.’
He commented that the assumption is that in future there will be more fishing vessels operating on LNG, and said that there are many smart ways to utilise energy, such as having the RSW tanks alongside the cooled LNG tanks.
‘We see an unprecedented potential in the technology that we are already working on,’ he said.
