Flawless cooling for transport of fish
To prevent bulky equipment systems from interfering from work on smaller trawlers, GEA offers automatic ice towers, installed on land, with solutions for simple dosing and for practical and hygienic ice handling. After all, ice is critical for cooling of such freight – and it can come from on board or on land.
If a fisherman doesn’t want to invest in an ice maker on board, he doesn’t have to wait long for ice. GEA supplies its maritime customers throughout the world with ice from on land, and has already equipped hundreds of fishing harbors with ice towers. Fishermen can pick up the individual amounts of ice that they need from these towers. In ideal cases, such ice silos are integrated into the port facilities such that a transport system directly fills the ships with ice, without tedious loading.
To be ideally prepared for peak demand, such facilities produce and store the ice in advance. GEA Refrigeration Technologies offers automatic towers for such requirements: systems that store the ice hygienically, in accordance with food and beverage requirements, and in perfect consistency. These systems dispense the ice by screw conveyors at the press of a button on the first-in, first-out principle (FIFO). As required, GEA can also supply such towers with weighing functions, coin payment, and indicators for ice filling levels.
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- Automatic ice production, storage, and dispensing
- Ice dispensing according to the FIFO principle
(first-in, first-out) - Hygienic ice storage in
accordance with food and beverage requirements - Dosing and weighing systems
For example, GEA has installed an ice tower at the French fishing harbor Port de pêche de la Turballe. This harbor, in vicinity of Saint-Nazaire, is the second main source of income for this region, after tourism. Earlier, this port was a major terminal for sardines, and now the fishing fleet does most of its business with sea bass, mackerel, and octopus. The harbor is populated by a colorful fishing fleet of netters, coastal fishing vessels, and deep-sea trawlers. With propulsion ratings of around 600 PS, lengths of over 22 meters, and a crew of six or seven, trawlers are among the largest fishing vessels in this French harbor – and they use a goodly amount of ice. To assure their customers of special fish quality, these trawler fisherman go out only briefly to sea – around 15 to 30 minutes – and quickly bring their catch on land in ice-cooled boxes.
In addition to flake ice, the fishing industry also makes extensive use of liquid ice, which is a water-ice suspension. On the basis of its liquid consistency, it can be easily pumped – which means that the ice production and the dispensing points can be relatively far apart. The extremely small ice crystals are gentle on the fish skin and cool the cargo especially fast and uniformly. The GEA product portfolio includes five land-based liquid-ice machines that cater for this trend. Their output ranges from 3,000 to 12,000 kg of ice per hour, depending on the model..
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