Delivering the world's largest salmon harvest boats to Mowi

The two new vessels will be named Tauroa and Tautiki, and are to be delivered by 2025 for joint operation of the new plant on Jøsnøya, an island to the west of Trondheim that is connected to the mainland by a road tunnel. 

Mowi Jøsnøya is a combined slaughterhouse and processing facility that slaughters and fillets salmon sourced from the company's locations in producyion areas 6 and 7.

The factory replaced the old slaughterhouse at Ulvan, and is three times larger than the old one, with an annual capacity of 100,000 tonnes. It was completed in 2023, and production started in June this year.

When the two vessels are put into operation at Jøsnøya, Mowi can begin to operate in two shifts. With their lengths of nearly 70 metres, Napier claims they will be the world's largest processing vessels. 

Both vessels are 15 metres wide, and have a maximum speed of 14 knots.

The large dimensions allow the boats to handle 750 tonnes of salmon on board. Jahn Helge Bjørnestad, chief commercial officer of shipping company Napier, told Fish Farming Expert's Norwegian sister site, Kyst.no, that the set-up is adapted to handle up to 36,000 fish per hour. 

"After loading, the fish swim into a counter-current pool, where the stun-and-bleed rig is set up with a total of 48 different channels. After processing, the load will be distributed to eight tanks where the fish are cooled down to about 0.5 degrees for further transport to the processing plant."

The two vessels are currently under construction at the Sefine shipyard in Turkey.

The vessels will be fuelled by marine diesel oil, although Napier is looking at hydrogen for the future. It has been awarded NOK 123 million by the state's green transition quango ENOVA to support the realisation of the company's new hydrogen-powered process vessel.