Vónin branches out into trawl design

“Vónin staff have extensive experience in rigging and using trawl doors of all kinds, while our partner has a wealth of specialist theoretical knowledge. We have been selling trawl doors for years, but never our own designs, so this is a new departure”, said Vónin’s Bogi Nón.

The design range does not include a conventional bottom door, as it was felt that there was a need to focus on doors that stay off the bottom or make minimal contact with it. Hence, the Storm design has been developed specifically as a semi-pelagic model.

“A lot of trawlers across the north Atlantic region are switching to semi-pelagic doors, and we were determined to come up with something that would meet their needs, as well as serving as a bottom door as well if required”, said Mr Nón.

The Storm prototype is in its second round of testing on shrimp trawler Akamalik, after the first trip to the Barents Sea pin-pointed features that required refinement, leading to some aspects of the design to be remodelled.

Another design, the pelagic Tornado, is a highly innovative trawl door design with its five foils, as well as the flow booster that steers the flow of water on its way to the foils to provide very effective lift. Vónin says that the patent pending design produced CL/CD figures are among the most impressive for any trawl door on the market.

“The first pair was tested on board Christian í Grótinum, with the 12 square metre Tornado prototypes easily equalling the performance of the 14 square metre pair of doors they had been fishing with before – and out-performing them,” said Mr Nón. “We feel that what we have here is the most effective trawl door on the market today.”

Capto success
The company has also reported success in the Norwegian market for Gerda Maria, which used a 2,016 metre trawl made from Capto for the 2015 blue whiting season.

"Gerda Maria took its 7,500 tonne quota in four trips," said Jógvan S Jacobsen at Vónin’s pelagic division. "Vónin supplied a full package, including [Monarch] trawl doors and a 68m codend with a 700 tonne capacity."

Using Vónin’s Capto rope has made a significant difference to the company’s pelagic trawls, making them easier to handle than this kind of gear had been in the past, as well as easier to shoot and haul.

"The skippers really appreciate how light these trawls are to tow compared to older gears, while the strength and high abrasion resistance mean that trawls made in Capto have a much longer working lifetime than what they had been used to", said Mr Jacobsen.

The Gerda Maria order was followed by an order for another full package for the new Kvannøy, and there have since been more orders from Norway, including a 2,304 metre trawl for Åkerøy, another 2,304 metre set of gear for Tronderbas, and Viking Bank and Cetus ordered smaller 1,728 metre gear, giving Vónin a secure foothold on the Norwegian market.

"All of the trawls are made in our Capto rope in the large meshes, which has proved to be a very successful combination. The handmade meshes in the forward sections of all these trawls decrease row by row down to the belly, providing a gradual reduction through the large mesh sections", said Mr Jacobsen.

"We have also been busy with sorting grids for blue whiting and these have been effective in filtering out non-target species from catches. These are used when the fish move north into Faroese waters, so we have supplied a lot of these to Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese pelagic vessels."