Fish industry news
Faxi RE docked at Akranes last night with a full load of capelin, 1500 tonnes caught at the outer edge of Breidafjördur and south-west of Látrabjarg. According to chief mate Hjalti Einarsson, the western migration of capelin appears to have brought large concentrations of fish to the southern area of Breidafjördur, but the fleet has struggled with bad weather and heavy seas...
Fresher trawler Ottó N Thorláksson is back fishing after having been laid up for almost three months due to a main engine breakdown. The trawler is now off the south-west of Iceland and fishing well...
This year the Icelandic Cancer Society’s annual Moustache March was kicked off with a ceremony held on board HB Grandi’s trawler Helga María at the Reykjavík harbour. Health minister Kristján Þór Júlíusson and Jens Garðar Helgason, chairman of Fisheries Iceland unveiled a handsome moustache in front of Helga María’s wheelhouse...
‘These winds have been prevalent for so long that the sea never gets a chance to settle,’ said Lundey NS’s skipper Arnthór Hjörleifsson when we spoke to him last week and he commented sourly on the westerly and south-westerly winds that have made this winter such a hard one for everyone...
‘We started freezing roe from Faxi RE’s landing yesterday morning. The roe haven’t reached optimal maturity but it’s important to have the production line up and running when it has reached full maturity,’ said Gunnar Hermannsson, who manages capelin roe production at the HB Grandi factory in Akranes...
HB Grandi has previously announced its contracts with the Turkish shipyard Celiktrans Deniz Insaat Ltd. for the construction of two pelagic vessels, expected to be delivered in 2015. The first vessel will replace two 55-year-old pelagic vessels: Víkingur AK 100, which has already been sold, and Lundey NS 14. The new vessels will be called Venus NS 150 and Víkingur AK 100. Once this transaction is completed, the average age of the company’s fleet will decrease from 33 to 23 years...
‘We’re seeing higher marks for all of our facilites and we can be extremely pleased with the state of our production,’ said Erlendur Stefánsson, HB Grandi’s quality manager, commenting on the results of an IFS quality audit that was carried out at the company’s processing plants in Reykjavík, Akranes and Vopnafjördur, as well as at HB Grandi's subsidiary Vignir G Jonsson...
‘We’re hoping for the best. At least the capelin are showing up in the shallows off the east coast where we have seen them before. Going by the catches off Stokksnes and south of Hornafjördur over the last few days, it looks like the capelin season is properly underway. A lot of things have taken us by surprise this winter, not least the size of the capelin off the east coast. It’s not far off being twice the size of the capelin we caught in the north,’ said Arnthór Hjörleifsson, skipper of Lundey NS...
Ingunn AK docked in its home port of Akranes today with an estimated 1900 tonnes of capelin on board. The catch was taken in seven shots with a deep seine on the Skagagrunn grounds off Húnaflói Bay, the same area that has seen the heaviest capelin fishing over the last few days...
Lundey NS docked at Akranes wednesday morning with 1500 tonnes of capelin on board. This is Lundey’s second landing this season at Akranes and factory manager Gudmundur Hannesson said that the outlook is for a good season...
‘The weather has been foul the whole time, not least during the steam home. We got through the storm yesterday that the Norwegians named Ole, and we had wind speeds of 40 m/sec for four hours. When the wind dropped away to 25 m/sec, the sea started to build up. Now we’re steaming into the wind instead of setting a direct course for home,’ said Ægir Franzson, skipper of Therney RE when we spoke to him this evening...
On 17th of December 2013 HB Grandi published news that the freezer trawler Venus HF519 (built in Spain in 1973) had been sold to the Greenlandic company Northern Seafood Aps for the price of 320 million ISK that should be paid over the next few years...
Lundey NS was scheduled to dock at Akranes this afternoon with full tanks of capelin, the first landing of the season to Akranes. The fish were caught in three shots east of the Skagagrunn grounds...
The last year was the first full year of operation for HB Grandi’s Ísbjörninn refrigerated store at its Nordurgardur site in Reykjavík. In total 33,000 tonnes of frozen products from the company’s freezer vessels and the Nordurgardur processing facility passed through Ísbjörninn over the year...
‘We arrived here off Melrakkaslétta Yesterday morning but the capelin aren’t showing themselves. There’s plenty there, but the marks are small and the fish look to be dispersed and sticking to the shallows close to the land. This is the same situation as last season, but not what we have been seeing in past years,’ said Gudlaugur Jónsson, skipper of Ingunn AK, when we spoke to him...
Lundey NS was due to dock at Vopnafjördur earlier today with around 1000 tonnes of capelin on board. According to skipper Arnthór Hjörleifsson, fishing has been slow since they sailed in the New year, but picked up this last weekend...
Production of frozen capelin got under way at HB Grandi’s Vopnafjördur factory yesterday with a payload 455 tonnes of capelin landed by Faxi RE. According to factory manager Magnús Róbertsson, roughly half of the fish is expected to be suitable for freezing for markets in Eastern Europe. There is minimal feed in the fish and it is suitable for human consumption...
Things have been quiet on the fishing grounds north of Iceland since the pelagic fleet started its search for capelin in the New Year. According to Albert Sveinsson, skipper of Faxi RE, the capelin are dispersed and marks are loose. Faxi is now fishing 90 nautical miles north of Raudinúpur, and by yesterday evening had 390 tonnes on board after three hauls...
The HB Grandi fleet last year landed 152,500 tonnes of fish with a value of approximately ISK15.20 billion. This represents a reduction compared to the previous year when the company fleet landed 188,200 tonnes worth ISK16.80 billion...
As every year, HB Grandi invited its entire workforce for a Christmas lunch. This time the Christmas lunch was served in five facilities at three locations around the country...