In addition to the advantage of a reduced price compared with a new machine, there could well be the opportunity to buy a tried and trusted design that has stood the test of time and has proved to be very capable of performing a particular operation.
There are many different types of second hand processing equipment available, of course. Processing plants are shut down as companies contract or go out of business, or processing lines are replaced or re-equipped. The equipment put up for sale can range from the almost new to having been used for years.
An example of purchasing equipment from a plant that has had to be closed is by a firm building a dedicated tilapia filleting factory in Malaysia. The brand new plant will have a production capacity of 20,000t and will be a joint venture between a local processor and a Norwegian company which is farming tilapia for export to the USA and Europe.
The equipment for the plant will be taken from a whitefish filleting plant in northern Norway which has been shut down.
No doubt the machinery will have to be modified to adapt to processing the new species, but the economics of the venture must stack up for it to be worthwhile to take the equipment out of the existing factory, crate it up, transport it half way round the world and then install it in the new factory.
As a sort of halfway house between buying brand new processing equipment and taking a chance on purchasing old machines, there are companies which specialise in completely renovating old processing equipment. These machines are stripped down to the basic frames and parts replaced as necessary as they are rebuilt. At this stage modifications can also be carried out to incorporate improvements which have been made by the manufacturers since the machines were first developed.
Such machines are fully guaranteed and can be regarded almost as good as new. The price will be higher than for a machine which has not been touched since it was taken out of the factory, or vessel, into which it had been installed, but considerably less than purchasing new.
One such supplier is Seac AB of Sweden, which claims to be one of the main suppliers of fish processing machines in the world with more than 40 years experiences of Arenco and VMK machines for processing pelagic species.
"We are mainly rebuilding or making complete renovations of former Arenco and VMK machines, giving a one-year guarantee on all our delivered machines. We are also up to 50% less in price than similar brand new machines," the company says.
Seac has a network of agents throughout the world. It also supplies new as well as renovated processing equipment, and installs both onboard factory vessels and in land-based factories. It has recently supplied a lot of renovated equipment in Russia and Ukraine where money hasn’t been available to buy new machines.
