Tuugaalik, the latest newbuild in the series of factory trawlers built by Astilleros de Murueta, continues a process of fleet renewal that began with Sisimiut, and is set to continue with a contract signed for a replacement for Akamalik to be delivered in 2025.
The series of trawlers for Royal Greenland and its partner companies follows what has become an established formula. New Tuugaalik entered service this summer, and this is an 82.3-metre factory vessel, built like the rest of the Murueta-built series to a Skipsteknisk design.
Tuugaalik has a 1,550-cubic-metre upper-refrigerated fish room with a 334 pallet capacity, while the 1,400-cubic-metre lower-level fish room can hold 287 pallets. In addition, there’s a 200-cubic-metre packaging store.
Carsoe has supplied factory decks for the series of trawlers built at Murueta and Tuugaalik’s processing layout is no exception. There is a three-lane factory layout with processing systems tailored for halibut, cod and shrimp. On the shrimp line the catch is sorted and graded before continuing to the cooking line. Halibut are sorted and J-cut, whole round processed, headed and tailed. The cod line is designed for effective H&G production.
The three processing lines meet at the freezing section, where the processed catch is frozen before proceeding to automatic sorting and palletising in the packing section where frozen blocks and IQF-shrimp are sorted and palletised by species.
Layered wrapping ensures safe storage at sea. Pallets are transferred via elevators to the cargo hold. This is a fully-automated Carsoe handling system designed to optimise processes, while also minimising need for crew to work in the refrigerated fish room.
Efficient processing
With a combined freezing capacity of 80 tonnes per 24 hours, Tuugaalik has two automatic plate freezers, two complete IQF freezing tunnels and four vertical freezers designed to ensure effective and high-capacity freezing. This ensures that the factory vessel can process and freeze rapidly to allow quotas to be fished effectively.
All three types of freezers are designed, produced, and installed by Carsoe.
Tuugaalik has a MAN propulsion system, with a 7200kW 12V32/44CR main engine powering a 4500mm diameter MAN CCP VBS 1180 turning at 127.9 rpm, driven via an ACG 1080 5.86:1 reduction gearbox. MAN also supplied the 3200kWe PTO shaft generator. Auxiliary power is delivered by a pair of 940kWe CAT32 gensets, and a 163kWe CAT7.1 harbour set.
Brunvoll supplied the 750kW FU63LTC1750 bow thruster and 500kW FU63LTC1500 stern thruster.
Tuugaalik is fishing with groundfish gear from Vónin, using Bacalao trawls rigged on rockhoppers and spread with a pair of Storm trawl doors. The package includes a full inventory of spares and chandlery.
The Seaonics deck equipment layout starts with four 55-tonne PM trawl winches with a Seaonics Scantrol control system, and there is a bank of eight 18-tonne sweepline winches at the head of the full-length trawl deck. The electric deck hardware also includes 16-tonne outhaul winches, 7-tonne auxiliary winches and a 26-tonne net drum mounted over the deck, plus smaller auxiliary, retriever, brackstrop and mooring winches, and the anchor windlass.
