At the beginning of August, the factory, fish-transport vessel, Norwegian Gannet, will start its rounds between Norwegian marine pens and waiting Danish distributors.
Carl-Erik Arnesen has been company chief exec for a month-and-a-half. He’s CEO at the Hav Line group, and he’s been CEO at Firda and marketing director at Alsaker.
“I’m actually a salmon-farmer, not a ship operator,” said Carl-Erik Arnesen.
The Bergen-based Hav Line is finishing up its new-build factory vessel aimed at radically changing the value chain for salmon by retrieving fish from pens and bringing them to the European market.
Read Factory vessel, Danish plant to change logistics
“By making use of fewer operations and cutting the number of transports you create biological, environmental and cost dividends,” Arnesen said, asserting that it’s not been dubbed, “The Hav Lines method.”
“The name is Norwegian Ganett, a gannet, perhaps the toughest fisherman on the coast. It dives like an F-16 from 45 meters in the air.”
Poor roads
Hav Lines was founded by the Haugland and Sekkingstad families. The business idea was conceived 10 years ago.
“The boat has a lot of capacity. It can take out 1,000 tonnes per trip. We believe it can make it out to market (with its load) in half the amount of time (as seen today),” he said.
The vessel’s capacity is that of three or four wellboats, and it vaults over transports stuck on poor Norwegian roads.
“This method of transporting fish will cut the number of road transports, fish boxes, escapes and disease outbreaks. It will also lead to fewer operations that stress fish,” Arnesen argued at a Bergen aquaculture conference on Thursday.
Thought-through
Norwegian Gannet is being built at the family owned Balenciaga yard in the Bay of Biscay.
“We started building boat in Spain last January, and it’ll be operational by August 1st. The vessel has siloed tanks onboard that collect effluent to be treated before being released. It’s all been thought through,” a confident Arnesen asserted.
Together with the Sekkingstad company, Hav Line is now setting up an 8,000-square-meter receiving terminal at the ferry landing in Hirtshals, Denmark. The new facility will boast two sorting and packing lines and 18 receiving bays.
“The facility there is dimensioned for the boat. The same building houses the Sekkingstad outfit. Time is of the essence in the fish trade, as they say in Norwegian,” he said.
