Marel focusing on complete fish processing lines
Demonstrations of Marel processing equipment attracted plenty of attention at this year’s Seafood Processing Europe exhibition
“We focus on providing companies with complete processing lines, not just individual pieces of equipment,” says Kristján Hallvardsson, director of product development for Marel. “We are a total solution provider. Processors are now looking for a single point of entry. They prefer one company to be responsible for the whole line; for delivery, installation, service etc.”
A complete fish processing line from the Icelandic company could consist of equipment for de-heading, filleting, automatic intelligent trimming, pinboning, skinning, portioning, freezing and automatic tray loading.
Marel is by far the biggest manufacturer of processing equipment in the world supplying 15-20% of all the machines manufactured. The company spends €35-40 million, or 5-7% of its revenue, annually on research and development.
“This for the whole group,” Mr Hallvardsson says. “We also manufacture processing equipment for the meat and poultry industries as well as fish. And we transfer technology from one sector to the other. We are very active in doing that as we are continuously looking to improve and broaden our product portfolio to increase our customer value.
“We look two, five, years ahead and assess each year what we need to do in our development programme. For salmon the trend is for pre-rigor processing. This increases the quality of the product and its shelf-life, which are our main aims.”
The time taken for rigor to set in for salmon is up to five days, which can be the transport time from Norway. Says Mr Hallvardsson: “We are moving [processing] closer to the slaughter house. We are looking to process [salmon] straight out of the sea.”
Marel is developing more equipment for value-added processing and now manufactures slicing machines for smoked salmon. (The company claims to supply the fastest and most accurate slicer for fresh salmon on the market.)
Marel is ‘quite big’ in manufacturing processing equipment for groundfish (whitefish) species such as cod, saithe and haddock, both in on land and at sea, which is where Marel originally started in business. “We supply a total [processing] solution, similar to what we do for salmon. And, again, we are seeking to improve throughput, quality and yield,” Mr Hallvardsson says.
The company’s Innova processing reporting software is important for today’s processors to monitor their factory operations, according to Mr Hallvardsson. “It covers the complete production cycle from receiving the raw material to dispatching the finished product. It even goes as far as determining the size of fish required for the proucts to be produced,” he says. “It helps processors to work from orders back.”
Another big trend for Marel is detecting bones in finished products. It has developed x-ray machines which can detect bones down to 0.2mm in thickness. “This is very important for meals for children, for example,” says Mr Hallvardsson. “We have been involved with this inspection work for over eight years now.”
Marel is now supplying more equipment for processing some of the popular freshwater ‘whitefish’ being farmed such as tilapia and pangasius. At this year’s Seafood Processing Europe show in Brussels, the company staged daily ‘roadshows’ consisting of live demonstrations and presentations of its equipment and solutions for these two species, in addition to salmon and marine whitefish.
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