Longliner Veidar suffered a serious fire on board last winter, and has been at the Vard shipyard in Søvik for a major refit, which is now approaching completion.
The processing deck was badly damaged in the fire, and a completely new factory deck has been fitted by Optimar for producing H&G groundfish.
The layout is designed to make handling a variety of species and sizes easier, and Havfront has supplied both its Loppa 100 heading machine, as well as the first Folla header to be installed on board a fishing vessel as this is normally used in land-based processing.
The two machines will provide the factory with a 55-tonne per day throughput capacity.
‘Through a close dialogue, we have landed a co-operation agreement where personnel from Havfront will follow the customer closely to take on possible challenges that may arise in a factory that moves in bad weather,’ said Havfront project manager Oddbjørn Gudmundsen.
‘It will be exciting to collaborate with the ocean-going fleet to adapt our technology to their needs. The workday on the vessel will be completely different for both machine operators and factory managers who have been used to machines developed in the 60s and 70s.’
The Loppa heading machine has been in use since 2016 when the first unit was installed on a fishing vessel, since when these machines have been supplied to around fifty vessels and processing plants ashore. It handles fish in the 1-12kg range, while the Folla header is designed for fish up to 20kg.
It has a throughput rate of 20 stunned and bled fish per minute and it adjusts automatically for smaller and larger fish.
