Bakkafrost orders new wellboat

The design for the new boat. Photo: Knud E Hansen

BAKKAFROST has ordered a new carbon friendly wellboat with a capacity to hold 1,000 tonnes of salmon.

The Faroe Islands fish farmer says the investment is part of the company’s strategy to produce large quantities of sustainably farmed fish. Designed by the leading Danish company Knud E, Hansen and to be built at the Sefine shipyard in Turkey, the vessel is 109 meters long and 22 meters wide. It has a capacity of 10.000 cubic metres where the four wells have a total capacity of 7.000 cubic metres of seawater, and the tanks have a total capacity of 3.000 cubic metres of freshwater. Completion is expected in 2022.

Bakkafrost said:

\’As part of the plan to reduce the company’s carbon footprint, the new wellboat is equipped with battery storage systems. This means that the energy consumption is optimal at all times. The vessel either uses the energy from the accumulators, or it stores energy in the accumulators, when additional energy is produced, as one of the five engines starts. In addition, the vessel will be connected to land based electrical sources, when it lays at the harbour, which makes it very quiet in operation. It is also equipped with DP, which means that the vessel has the ability to lay at a certain point at sea without being tied up or anchored while performing different tasks in open sea.

CEO Regin Jacobsen said:

\’At Bakkafrost, we continuously look at how we can reduce the biological risk in our operations, and the new wellboat contributes to the task to ensure a stable and healthy production.
The wellboat is equipped with technology that can produce freshwater from seawater, which is used for de-licing operations. In total, the production capacity in 24 hours is 6.000 m3 of freshwater. Thus, the vessel can perform salmon treatments without leaving the area to get freshwater.

\’The new wellboat is a vital step towards reaching the strategic goals of having a total capacity of 100.000 tons of salmon, and to gut 500 tons a day at the factory at Glyvrar. The need of vessels to perform different tasks is growing significantly in the future. The need of transportation of smolt will increase significantly, as we have started to farm smolt on land for a longer period. In the future, the smolt will weigh between 500 and 700 grammes before released to the cages. In addition, the vessels will perform tasks in relation to de-licing and other gill-related challenges as well as transportation of bigger salmon in relation to open sea farming.\’

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