A few months after winning big in Russia’s government-run auctions for crab quotas, the Russian Crab Group is making a big investment in new fishing vessels.
The Vladivostok, Russia-based Russian Crab Group – comprised of subsidiaries Pacific Crab, Kamchatka Crab, and Atlantic Crab – has signed separate contract with the Onego Shipyard in Petrozavodsk and the Okskaya shipyard in Nizhny Novgorod to build a combined 10 new crab vessels by 2024, according to a 3 March press release.
Seven of the 10 vessels will be livestock carriers, used for catching and transporting live crab, while the remaining three will be catcher-processors equipped with a processing factory for the production of raw-frozen and boiled-frozen crab products, capable of producing 15 tons of finished products daily, according to the company. The livestock carriers will be built at the Onego Shipyard, while the catcher-processors will be constructed at the Okskaya shipyard. The DAMEN shipbuilding group has created the plans for the vessels, and the average vessels price will be RUB 1.5 billion (USD 22.6 million, EUR 20.3 million).
In December 2019, The Russian Crab Group won 10 crab-fishing lots at auction, paying RUB 38.3 billion (USD 599.2 million, EUR 540.8 million) in exchange for 15-year fishing rights catch 10,000 to 12,000 MT of crab annually, or around 15 percent of Russia’s entire crab quota, making it one of biggest crab quota owners in the industry. The auction conditions required the winning bidders to make investments in processing facilities or upgrades to their fishing vessels.
“The company plans to build larger vessels than the basic conditions of the auction require,” Russian Crab Group CEO Dmitry Trubnikov said. “These will be more effective and productive vessels that meet all modern requirements for crab catching. This approach will increase the autonomy of vessels and the volume of transported products, significantly improve product quality and, which is important for the company, will improve living conditions and crew safety.”
The new vessels of both types will have a length of at least 57 meters and a width of about 13 meters, and will each house between 20 to 32 crewmembers on board, the company said.
“Living and working conditions for crewmembers will be provided in accordance with advanced world standards,” it said. “Innovative solutions for the Russian crab industry will be applied. Including: an automatic system for regulating the temperature and composition of water in the live tanks, a water exchange system that will allow to completely renew the water in the tanks in the event of contamination, as well as solutions to maintain high product quality when unloading large volumes of crab in adverse weather conditions (low or high temperature).”
