New scalloper launched for Islay

A NEW scallop boat for Islay has just been launched. Built by Parkol Marine Engineering of Whitby, the 20m long Atlantic Dawn is the first vessel to be completed at the company’s new Middlesbrough yard.
She will be delivered to Islay Crab Exports, which is a family run fishing business supplying high quality shellfish, including crabs, lobsters and scallops to European markets.
The company, which was established in 1985, operates a fleet of scallopers and crabbers which fish off the Outer Hebrides, the west coast of Scotland and sometimes as far out to the Donegal coast in Ireland.
The catches are collected by a fleet of specially equipped, aerated and refrigerated vehicles, and then delivered to well established markets in France, Italy and Spain.
The Atlantic Dawn (CN-25) will join the company’s other scalloper, the smaller Crystal Dawn.
Parkol Marine Engineering is Britain’s best known builder of mainly small and medium sized fishing vessels and is particularly popular with Scottish catching companies. Now it wants to expand into the big boat building league.
Established in 1971 in Whitby, where it employs more than 70 people, it opened a new yard further up the coast in Middlesbrough almost a year ago because it needed extra space to build larger vessels.
Jim Morrison, Parkol’s managing director, described the expansion as an important new chapter in the life of the company, adding that the sky was now the limit in what it could do.
Parkol currently has five fishing vessels under various stages of construction.
Picture: The Campbeltown registered Atlantic Dawn (photo Parkol)