The operation of modern fishing companies requires a thorough knowledge of the fishing itself, processing and marketing of the products.
The amount of information managers need to process in order to make the best decisions increases year after year. Where should they direct their fleet, what to fish, where to process and where to sell their catch?
Fishing companies that operate one or more processing plants in addition to a fleet of vessels can now increase data overview significantly with the newly developed FisHmark software.
FisHmark is an optimisation software, designed by Matis, TrackWell and partners, in collaboration with four of the major fishing companies in Iceland.
The software uses catch data from SeaData, the electronic logbook and reporting system from TrackWell as a basis for the optimisation. On top of the catch data processing data is added from the processing plants including the location and capacity of each processing plant. Finally, information about the company's fishing fleet and quota status is added, including the latest market price, and a number of other parameters.
FisHmark then calculates the most effective utilisation of the fleet for a given time period in the future. The calculations are based on the best available information from the past, to predict the future and suggest several scenarios to proceed. The aim is to lower the cost and thereby increase the profit of the fisheries.
The optimisation algorithms have been under development for years, as a part of two Masters thesis at the University of Iceland.
The first operational system has been in trial operation at one processing plant in Iceland since March this year. The results so far look very promising.
TrackWell will be offering this solution to fishing companies later this year as an add-on to the SeaData electronic reporting system.
