The thinking behind it was to come up with a single trawl that would, as far as possible, achieve the same spread as a twin-rig set of gear. Fjarðanet's designers worked on this development with the crews of Samherji and HB Grandi trawlers.

"This has been successful as we can see that the swept area has increased significantly and the figures we have been getting from the trawlers confirm what we had already seen in the flume tank," said Fjarðanet managing director Jón Einar Marteinsson, adding that the Wide Trawl is in use on a growing number of trawlers and can be supplied either in conventional PE netting or Hampiðjan's new Advant netting.

Fjarðanet has also been busy with codends, working with Hampiðjan's QuickLines to produce T90 codends for mackerel that Síldarvinnslan has been using on its pelagic vessels, as well as codends for groundfish made on the same principles.

"Börkur's skipepr Hjörvar Hjálmarsson has said that their gear fishes well and they have never before had a codend that pumps out so easily," Jón Einar Marteinsson said.

"This is one of the most exciting projects we have worked on in co-operation with Síldarvinnslan and this codend technology will be presented at the IceFish exhibition on stand D50 with our parent company Hampiðjan."