Optimar Iceland says that business is good and this has been reflected in its latest projects. On the Engey RE a pelagic vessel owned by Icelandic fishing company HB Grandi and 105m long, they are installing 20 units of semi-automatic vertical freezers, each with 12.5 tonnes a day capacity, giving a total of 250t per day. Optimar Iceland is also delivering all the associated transport conveyers and packing systems and two vacuum pump systems for feeding from the cooling tanks to the processing deck.
On the liquid ice machine front they are delivering five machines to owners in Ireland, four of them for new builds and one for a pair trawler. Reynir Gudjonsson sales manager of Optimar Iceland says the company's Irish sales seem to suggest that its Irish customers 'are more quality conscious than the British'. "In the UK they are paying very high prices for their flake ice. The payback time is much shorter for a liquid ice machine, not to mention the fact that grants are available there to reduce the initial investment costs. "Yet they are still very conservative, even though market forces [show] that there is no question about the quality improvement. Fruitful Bough, the first UK new build to install an Optim-Ice liquid ice machine, was recently awarded the title of 'Fishing vessel of the Year'.
