The latest in a series of trawlers operated by Faroese fishing company Framherji to carry the Akraberg name has been delivered by Norwegian shipbuilder Vard.
New Akraberg replaces the trawler built in 1994 as Guðbjörg that has fished for the company since being acquired from Iceland in 2013, and which is now back in Iceland as Snæfell.
Built at Vard’s Braila yard in Romania and brought to the shipbuilder’s Brattvag facility for outfitting, this is one of the most advanced factory vessels in service anywhere in the world. Akraberg is an 84-metre, 16.7-metre breadth Vard 8 03 design. This is a development of the Vard 8 02 that has already performed successfully for Norwegian fishing operators.
Accommodation on board is to an exceptionally high standard, for a crew of 25, all in single, en-suite cabins.
Export Finance Norway (Eksfin) provided Framherji with long-term financing totalling DKK312 million, and the loan has been paid out in part during the construction period up to completion. Eksfin and Nordea have collaborated on this, and the entire loan amount is guaranteed by Nordea’s seafood department in Ålesund.
Akraberg has a 1,930-cubic metre refrigerated fishroom, an 830-cubic metre cargo space that can be used for either frozen or chilled catches and 550 cubic metres of ensilage tank capacity for landing biomass that can be processed further ashore.
New tech onboard
The processing setup on board includes a great deal of the latest technology with its advanced catch handling systems for both whitefish and shrimp, starting with live fish tanks to keep catches in peak condition prior to being passed to the processing deck.
The factory deck was outfitted by Ålesund company Steel-X and has an approximately 100-tonne-per-day throughput capacity in its bank of 12 Teknotherm vertical freezers. The industrial shrimp production line incorporates a cooker and IQF freezer.
The deck system is supplied by Seaonics, with four 40-tonne permanent magnet AC Big Drum trawl winches, offering opportunities for triple-rig trawling.
With an all-electric package of equipment, there are eight 18-tonne sweepline winches at the head of the full-length trawl deck and a 22-tonne, 25m3 net drum is mounted over the deck. Seaonics also supplied the three 20-tonnes gilsons, pairs of 16-tonne codend winches and 12-tonne outhaul winches, and a netsounder winch mounted on the aft gantry, as well as auxiliary and stag winches, capstans and the anchor windlass.
Cranes supplied by Seaonics are a 3.75t/8m stiff boom unit, plus a pair of 8t/7.5m – 3.75t/16m knuckleboom cranes.
Harmonised power
Akraberg is one of the first stern trawlers outfitted with Vard Electro’s SeaQ Energy Storage System. This battery system can be fed with power from the permanent magnet winches, and this is harmonised to function with the SeaQ Power Management System for integration with the hybrid diesel-electric propulsion and the 316kW/h battery package.
The 4,800kW main engine and 1,790kW auxiliary engine route power to the reduction gearbox and from there to the 4,000mm diameter propeller with a maximum output of 5,700kW.
A heat recovery system increases overall efficiency even further, while the propulsion system as a whole is compliant with the stringent DNV-GL Silent F notation.
