Mekhanik Maslak sailed from the yard in February for the long delivery trip, taking the southern sea route via the Suez Canal and calling at Busan in Korea before its scheduled first call in Sakhalin in April.
This series of 108-metre long, 21-metre breadth ST-192 factory trawlers is designed to operate in the Bering Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk, fishing with pelagic gear for pollock and herring – and replacing much of the Russian Fishery Company’s fleet of well-maintained by elderly Soviet-era tonnage.
A key reason for embarking on this very significant investment, part of the Russian government’s investment quotas initiative intended to boost both shipbuilding and fisheries, is the need to move into more sophisticated processing at sea, not least in producing surimi. The older fleet, dating back to the Soviet era, inevitably becomes increasingly high-cost in terms of maintenance, while having also reached the limits of what can be achieved by upgrading factory decks and facilities on board.
Increased capacity
Each of the new series of larger and higher capacity vessels is expected to replace several older vessels, and to be able to harvest around 60,000 tonnes each annually, with facilities for producing 60-80 tonnes of conventional frozen fillets per day, as well as having production capacity for surimi, fishmeal and fish oil onboard, with zero-waste as everything is processed at sea.
A pair of freight elevators and a freight conveyor take frozen production to the 4,250-cubic metre refrigerated fishroom. There are also 400 and 600 cubic metre holds for fishmeal, packaging and other products, and a roughly 100-cubic-metre fish oil capacity in two stainless steel tanks.
Designed for extended operation, Mekhanik Maslak has gantries and cargo booms for transhipment at sea into reefers, plus there are 8t/17m and 8t/8m deck cranes.
Accommodation is for 40 crew in single- and two-berth cabins, and there is accommodation space for up to 99 factory crew single- double-and four-berth cabins. Mekhanik Maslak has separate mess facilities for officers and crew, and it fitted out with its own cinema, gym and sauna.
Russian optimism
Mekhanik Maslak follows the first vessel of its kind built at the Admiralty yard, Kapitan Vdovichenko, which was delivered in early 2022. This was preceded by Vladimir Limanov, built to the same ST-192 design, but constructed at the Tersan yard in Turkey as a forerunner to the Russian-built series.
Two more trawlers, Mekhanik Sizov and Kapitan Martynov, are under construction at the yard in St Petersburg, but there is some doubt about the remaining vessels planned for the series as there are indications that RFC and other fishing companies have put newbuilds on hold due to the sanctions that prevent access to the almost exclusively western systems that have been installed onboard newbuilds so far. This includes main and auxiliary engines, processing systems, deck equipment, electronic systems, fishing gear and more, and there is a real prospect that further newbuilds for the Russian fleet will have to be re-engineered practically from the keel up to accommodate alternative technologies.
Despite this, official sources in Russia remain upbeat about the rounds of new vessel on the way and during Mekhanik Maslak’shandover ceremony Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Viktor Evtukhov announced that around 92 high-tech fishing vessels are currently being built at Russian shipyards, with 19 of these expected to be delivered this year.
“Our main concerns were related with the lead trawler of the series,” said the yard’s chief designer Ruslan Kasimov.
“We can safely say that Kapitan Vdovichenko has successfully confirmed its capabilities both during field trials and during operation. We also expect an excellent result from Mekhanic Maslak. I am confident that the trawler will cope with the trials just as efficiently, confirming the design specifications and once again demonstrating the high quality of the Admiralty construction.”
