The fantastic flexipanel was invented and developed to the fish farming industry a few years ago by Johnson Seafarms Ltd. Shetland.
In 2005, Vónin modified the flexipanel to the Flexi Grid, for use as a sorting system for pelagic fishery to filter roundfish from catches of Herring and Blue Whiting. Even though the Flexi Grid originally was used in pelagic trawls it is now also used for bottom trawls. Perfect for the smaller vessels with small decks.
The greatest advantage with a Flexi Grid, besides its good sorting abilities, is when trawls need to go on a net drum on board the vessel. There is absolutely no need for worrying about damaging the grid when reeling it onto the drum. It elegantly flattens out and you hardly notice it inside the tunnel.
The Flexi Grid is manufactured from strong plastic tubes with Dyneema twine going through. This makes the grid extremely flexible to work with and at the same time very strong.
It is also possible to shape the grid into which ever shape you want it. The pelagic vessels are now going from using a square grid with crossbars to using a oval shaped grid without any crossbars, and the feedback from the vessels has been very positive. The sorting is very good, but the greatest advantage with the oval Flexi Grid is that you do not have any crossbars, and that makes it even easier to get the grid on the deck and to get the grid on the netdrum. As the skippers say: “you don’t even notice that it is there”.
The size of the grid and distance between the tubes can be made to the customers needs.
