Technology

New methods reduce costs and increase efficiency From a global perspective the fish industry has lagged far behind most other industries with regard to the introduction of information technologies.

The belt feeder that doesn’t require electric power The FIAP Belt Feeder offers the perfect combination of reliability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness without bearing an unreasonable price tag.

A stainless steel strapping machine from Mosca proves itself at Mowi, Norway The global salmon indsutry is booming. In 2017, the leading countires in this sector produced over two millions tons of the popular food fish.

Exact cuts, consistent slices, perfect cubes There is increasing demand for convenience products that can be removed easily and individually from the packaging. This product form necessitates high-precision cutting and slicing machines that deliver neat, accurate results.

A new era has begun in the transport and logistics sector. Instead of tables and index cards, telephone inquiries and tedious searches on maps, today one just has to take a look at the computer screen or the smartphone to find out where a delivery is at that particular moment in time. Ground-breaking innovations such as barcodes, RFID, data loggers or GPS provide a wealth of data and are also asserting themselves in the seafood industry.

Liquid ice and slurry ice have certain advantages over flake ice. The liquid “binary” ice surrounds shrimps or fish within just seconds, and the ice doesn’t have to be broken up, so a pickaxe and shovel are superfluous. With “Easy Ice”, the refrigeration engineering company Cooltech now offers a new soft, snow-like ice which provides fast intensive cooling. On-board production of Easy Ice is inexpensive and the machine requires only little space.

The development of plastics some fifty years ago heralded the end of the use of wood as the preferred material for storing and transporting fish and seafood. Plastics were durable, mouldable, hygienic, lightweight, with good insulating properties, and easily customised.

Fish and seafood are sensitive products that mostly require packaging for transport and presentation at the retailer’s. Whether simple plastic bags or intelligent case-ready concepts, the packaging should be easy to handle, it should ensure product quality, and it should provide customers with information.

At all levels of production, from the origin of the raw materials in fishing and aquaculture, through processing and packaging, to the retailer’s, products are sorted and classified on the basis of defined characteristics.

As the global consumption of fish increases resources that were previously used for the production of fishmeal and fish oil are increasingly being considered for use by humans. Many of these fish are small in size and processing them involves a lot of manual labour. Some companies have however sensed an opportunity and are producing machinery that can relieve workers of this drudgery. One such company, Seac AB from Sweden, specialises in machines to process small pelagic fish ranging from sardinella/mackerel in the range of 2-8 fish per kg to European anchovy or vendace which ranges from 60 to 110 fish per kg.