The 75 by 20 metre workshops are right by the quayside in Skagen, and work had already begun at the new facility before the formal opening took place earlier this month. This is the first new net loft for many years to open for business in Skagen.
‘It brings us closer to our customers,’ said Egersund Trål’s Bjørn Havsø. ‘Egersund isn’t far from Denmark, but it’s far enough, so we decided to expand with an outlet in Skagen. Many of our customers, Danish and Swedish customers in particular, are fishing in the North Sea and offload in Denmark, so it makes sense to be here,’ he said.
‘There’s a lot of traffic in Skagen – it’s a fantastic place,’ he added.
Bjørn Havsø said that the Skagen facility is expected to handle mainly pelagic and sandeel gear, with production of new gear spread across both the Skagen and Egersund net lofts.
‘We can take advantage of the very high production capacity we have in Egersund for most of the production of new fishing gear,’ he said.
‘So far we have five staff in Skagen who have come across from Norway to work here, but we are recruiting locally and we hope that within a year we’ll have ten or twelve staff working at the new Skagen net loft.’
