Russia adopts Iceland design for fleet

THE Russian fishing company Norebo Group has placed an order for six new freezer trawlers largely based on the innovative ‘capsule’ design from Iceland.
The multi-million dollar contracts will be carried out at the Severnaya Verf (Northern Shipyard) in St Petersburg.
Each factory trawler is 81m long with a beam of 16m. They are destined for Norebo’s fishing companies, to catch cod and haddock in the Barents Sea and North Atlantic. They all feature the distinctive inverted Enduro Bow design.
Each will have a processing capacity of at least 21 tonnes per day of fillet production or a 60 tonne per day head and guts production, in addition to production on board of fishmeal and liver for canning.
Established in 1997, Norebo is a conglomerate of 13 fishing companies in Russia with activities in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as other companies in fish processing, logistics and sales.
The deal with Severnaya for building of these state-of-the-art vessels has been struck with five of the companies within the group: Rybprominvest JSC, Karat-1 JSC, Alternativa JSC, Karelian Seafood JSC and Murmansk Region Fleet JSC.
The vessels are similar in shape to a number of new trawlers delivered to fishing companies in Iceland recently and are from the Icelandic design company Nautic, which is part of the Knarr Maritime Group.
Nautic’s managing director Alfreð Tulinius said: ‘We have put a great deal of effort into preparing this project with Norebo Group in the last few months, as well as developing further projects in both north-western and far eastern regions of Russia.’
In 2016, Norebo vessels caught more than 500,000 tonnes of fish. With its head office in Murmansk, Norebo sells its products both in Russia and in the foreign markets.
Vitaly Orlov, director of Norebo Management LLC and owner of Norebo Group, said the company had made a conscious decision to invest in the most modern type of vessel able to work under harsh conditions, adding they would be built in a Russian shipyard with more than 100 years’ experience.