VESSEL REVIEW | Baldvin Njalsson – Massive factory trawler for Iceland’s Nesfiskur

Spain’s Armon Shipyard recently delivered a new factory stern trawler to southern Iceland-based, family-owned fishing and fish processing company Nesfiskur.

The Skipasyn-designed Baldvin Njalsson replaces an older Armon-built vessel in the Nesfiskur fleet. Like its predecessor, which has since been sold to owners in Russia, the newer, larger vessel is named after the late Baldvin Njalsson, who, along with his wife Thorbjorg Bergsdottir, founded Nesfiskur in 1986.

The new Baldvin Njalsson has an LOA of 65.5 metres, a beam of 16 metres, a depth of 6.6 metres, and a draught of 7.1 metres. Steel was used for the hull while the superstructure is built from aluminium. In addition to being spacious, the wheelhouse provides the bridge crew with a full 360 degrees of visibility to ensure better control during navigation and when operations on the aft deck are underway.

The wheelhouse is also noticeably less cluttered with only six electronic displays within the captain’s reach compared to the 14 screens on the 1991-built Baldvin Njalsson. The displays show data supplied by the vessel’s comprehensive electronics suite, which also includes fishfinding echosounders and sonar from Simrad.

The trawler is crewed by 28 personnel housed in a mix of single and twin cabins and has a fish hold capacity of 1,720 cubic metres. A 2,990kW engine drives a four-bladed, 5,000-millimetre propeller to deliver a maximum speed of 15 knots and a bollard pull of 72 tonnes as well as significantly reduced noise and vibration compared to similar propulsion arrangements. Rounding out the propulsion are a 400kW bow thruster, Hydramarin steering gear, and a high-lift rudder from Becker.

Also installed are a 1,875kW floating-frequency shaft generator and two Scania D116 596kW auxiliary generators.

The trawling equipment consists of electrically-powered winches and trawls supplied by Ibercisa, Hatoppur, and Bacalao and trawl doors from Morenot while the fish factory was provided by Optimar. Among other things, the use of electrically-powered as opposed to hydraulically-powered winches, as was the case on the older Baldvin Njalsson, guarantees significantly quieter operations.

A Scantrol automated system ensures enhanced control over all winch operations. The cranes were supplied by Ferri and boast 60-tonne and 20-tonne lifting capacities.

The catch handling equipment includes a processing deck with a total area of 580 square metres, a filleting machine, freezers that are also fitted with automatic discharge facilities, an automated palletiser, and a dedicated cargo lift for transporting pallets to the massive fishroom, from where these will be easily unloaded after the vessel reaches port. Since the catch will already be in pallets, unloading while at port will require less manpower, thereby further reducing the owners’ long-term operating costs.

All the processing and freezer facilities are housed on two decks and occupy a combined volume of 1,600 cubic metres.

Baldvin Njalsson was handed over to Nesfiskur in late November 2021 following a construction period of 15 months. The trawler’s delivery voyage is notable for it also included a brief transit off Ireland as the country’s northern and northwestern coasts were beset by gale-force winds brought about by Storm Arwen.