One of the interesting side events at the Icelandic Fisheries Exhibition was the opportunity for participants to do some ''fish tourism'' and head off to visit Baader''s factory and see their Baader 988 taking photos of whitefish.
The 988 is an automatic, pinbone-cutting, trimming and piece cutting machine that makes exact cuts which means higher throughput. Two operators load the right and left-hand fillet, tail-end forward on to the conveyor belts. Then the fillets pass under a camera and after snapping the images they are sent to a computer which calculates volume, weight and position of the pinbone area. Once the fillet's biometric and passport photo is loaded, the camera computer transmits the data to the cutting tool computer which controls the pinbone knife head and the cross-cutting tool.
As the fillet reaches the pinbone knives the latter are lowered at the calculated moment and perform a cut, following the pinbone zone in the most economical way to maximise the flesh. During the cut, the fillet is held by a vacuum on the conveyor belt. The parameters for the length and position of the cut, towards the loin and/or belly flap, can be changed via a touch-screen. The pinbone can be done with a double knife with a fixed distance or using a single knife, and the pinbones are retained in the belly flap. When using the double knife, the detached pinbone strip is discharged from the machine via chutes. If a customer wants to extend the loin area this special cut can be performed by an additional tool.
Once the pinbone cut is complete, the fillet is cut into pieces by means of a computer-controlled knife which performs crosscuts in relation to the fillet length. With the first cut, the tail tip is discharged via chutes. Then another crosscut at the beginning of the pinbone cut, gives three fillet pieces (loin, centrepiece and belly flap). The belly flap can also be discharged separately from the Baader 988. Loin and centrepiece can also be sorted out automatically for individual product flows.
Jochum Marth Ulriksson, general director of Baader Ã?sland Ehf, said that he sees the fishing industry going towards added-value products with higher quality and prices. He also said that factories will have less people and will become more and more automated and herring plants were already showing the way. Regarding Iceland, he says that its fishing industry is focused on quality and a high-value markets and that Iceland is looking at the more expensive kinds of fish for aquaculture production.
