SEAC says the company has moved the designed forward to meet new market demands - especially the demand to process smaller and smaller fish.

SEAC has been working with Latvian company Peruza for 15 years, and now the companies can present nobbing solutions for fish from approximately two per kilo to 150 fish per kilo, in different types of machines.

Smallest fish

For the smallest fish, from approx 70/80 to 130/150 fish per kilo, using the Peruza fish deheading and gutting line, up to 900 fish per minute can be processed with one to two operators. The end product is a deheaded and gutted fish with the tail on. SEAC says that this is the highest capacity machine on the market for very small fish.

The SEAC FPM-200 can be used for the “next step” of smaller fish (from approximately 20/25 to 60/70 fish per kilo) and with a capacity of up to 300/325 fish per minute, using five to six operators. SEAC tells World Fishing & Aquaculture that automatic feeding into the FPM-200 will be developed in 2012.

With SEAC FPM-200 (longer and wider pockets) users can make headed, gutted and tail-off (HGT) fish down to approx 1.5 to 2 fish per kilo and with a capacity of up to 200/225 fish per minute.

Unique

The company says that the SEAC FPM-200 is unique due to the mechanical gutting system that includes:

· An Individual Head Measuring Device that measures each fish separately, getting the highest possible yield out of each fish. With its ‘four knife system’ and using the downfall of the head pocket chain to take out up to 90 % of all entrails, the fish is almost entirely cleaned inside.

• The two Gutting Rollers remove out-hanging guts before fish is transported to the tail-cutting unit – this can be adjusted to cut as much of the tail as required.
• The system is “as close as you can come” to manual gutting with all the advantages, but capacity is still far higher than by manual work.
• The machine is well suited for soft or defrosted fish, due to the gentle gutting process.
• A number of tailor-made sets of head pockets are available for most types of fish (as it is here the yield is located) and each are designed for the type of fish.

SEAC says that due to points abover, the machine gives up to 15/18 % higher yield than a ‘normal’ vacuum gutting machine.

The FPM-200 can process a number fish species with similar body shapes, such as herring, mackerel, saury, silver smelt, sardine, sardinella, anchovy etc. However smaller white fish, such as blue-whiting, have also been produced in the machine with good results.

In 2011 the machine was installed in the Baltic States and in Russia and will be installed in different countries in the Mediterranean area in 2012, mainly working on Baltic herring and sardines. The machine will be presented at Seafood Processing Europe in Brussels in April 2012.