A second factory trawler for the Russian Fishery Company (RRPK) has been launched at the Admiralty Shipyard in St Petersburg. Floating off Mekanik Maslak follows the launch earlier this year of lead vessel in the series Kapitan Vdovichenko.
The launch of the 108 metre, 21 metre breadth Mekanik Maslak was attended by head of the Federal Fisheries Agency and Deputy Minister of Agriculture Ilya Shestakov, and by chairman of the RRPK board Gleb Frank, United Shipbuilding Corporation VP technical development Vasily Boytsov and Admiralty Shipyards general director Alexander Buzakov.
‘The launching of the second trawler of the series is a new milestone in the construction of the fishing complex, which will be updated in the future with 68 vessels of various classes, including large ones such as this,’ said Ilya Shestakov.
‘It is a pleasure to see that the new fleet, which will operate in the Far East and the Northern regions, is being built at domestic shipyards. Today’s event clearly shows that the Admiralty Shipyards is successfully coping with the task.’
Mekanik Maslak is the second in a series of six –plus options for four more – fishing vessels being built at the Admiralty Shipyards for RRPK, and is expected to be delivered to the owners in July 2021. The third and fourth vessels in the series are making progress and the yard expects to start cutting steel for the fifth and sixth early next year.
‘We are proud to continue the traditions of our predecessors who built fishing vessels in the past. But this trawler is engineering on a completely different level, both in terms of its technical characteristics and in equipping it with modern equipment,’ said Admiralty Shipyards general director Alexander Buzakov.
‘For us, this is a new stage in the construction of the fishing fleet. A series of trawlers for RRPK will significantly enhance the power of Russia’s fishing fleet. And we are sure that the yard’s obligations will be met on time.’
The contract for the series of RRPK trawlers was signed in October 2017, under the state investment quota programme.
These trawlers are intended for pelagic trawling for pollock and herring in the Bering and Okhotsk Seas, as well as in regions off the Russian east coast. The series of trawlers is to be outfitted with a 60-80 tonne/day processing capacity for frozen fillets, 80 tonnes/day of surimi mince and reduction capacity for 250 tonnes per day of fishmeal.
