Blue whiting production round the clock at Akranes

The last few days have seen 4,000 tonnes of blue whiting landed at HB Grandi’s Akranes fishmeal plant and production is now a round-the-clock operation with two twelve-hour shifts running. The big plant is running at full capacity on blue whiting, while the smaller facility that was recently commissioned is producing bone meal.

According to Almar Sigurjónsson, head of HB Grandi’s fishmeal production, Ingunn AK landed 1,800 tonnes of blue whiting at Akranes last week, closely followed by Faxi RE and Lundey NS, each with 1,100 tonnes. Ingunn is now back at sea, this time in the Faroese zone. Faxi’s landing was complete on Thursday and it has sailed from Akranes.

‘We finished landing Lundey’s fish on Friday and we expect it to take two days to process its fish. The blue whiting are pretty lean at this time of year so the fish oil production is also low,’ Almar Sigurjónsson said, and he added that there are five staff on each twelve-hour shift. He does not expect to see any more blue whiting in the near future, now that the Vopnafjördur factory is ready for production after having been having been expanded, plus it is able to run almost entirely on locally-sourced power.

‘Vopnafjördur is closer to the fishing grounds, and I don’t expect we’ll receive any more blue whiting unless there’s a real boom in the fishing,’ Almar Sigurjónsson said, adding that the Akranes plant processed 10,000 tonnes of capelin while the roe freezing season was in progress.