Norwegian company Scantrol is seeing an increasing demand for its autotrawl system this year, with orders for more than thirty systems in the first half of 2017 as the company expects to see a record 2017.
‘There is a boom for both building new fishing vessels and for upgrading existing vessels at the moment and we are delighted to be a recognised supplier of the controls for some of the major fishing companies in the world,’ said Scantrol’s business development manager Øyvind Hansen
‘Over the last two years Scantrol has places its focus on the fishing market and today there are more than 500 fishing vessels using Scantrol systems,’ he said, adding that user feedback is a key element in the continuous improvement of Scantrol’s systems.
‘Our focus has always been to only add functions that provide a valuable benefit for the users. The functionality of Scantrol iSYM is developed in close collaboration with experienced skippers and fishing companies. Based on a market research we did last year, the flexibility of the use of trawl sensors was highlighted as one of the most important factors when choosing control system. So we right away started to expand functionality with interface to other sensors such as those from Marport. This means that both Scanmar and Marport signals can be utilised for symmetry control.’
‘The trend for newbuilds is for larger fishing vessels with electrical winches. The share of electrical winches has increased significantly compared to hydraulic winches. There is also a strong interest in pair trawling in today’s market and the number of systems in use is growing. We are also experiencing a boom for upgrades of existing systems. Scantrol can supply upgrade solution for all autotrawl models on the market,‘ Øyvind Hansen said.
He said that Scantrol has also received orders for ten research vessels this year, including vessels for Canada, South-Korea and Scandinavia.
‘Marine Research is an important market for us and we are proud to say that Scantrol iSYM provides the possibility of standardise research sampling hauls. Marine research scientists are very concerned about repeatability of the catching performance of their trawl gear,’ he said.
‘To achieve good repeatability, it is important to maintain the geometry of the net as constant as possible. With Scantrol iSYM the scientists have good control of the net geometry in all situations, regardless of tide and weather conditions.’
