First crab vessel built in Russia under investment quota program handed over to Antey

In late May, Russia’s crab industry hit a milestone with the delivery of the first crab ship built under the country’s investment quota program.

The first-in-class vessel, Rus’, was delivered the Antey group of companies, which will deploy it in the Russian Far East. It was built at the Pella shipyard in the Leningrad region and is the first crab ship ever constructed at a Russian shipyard. It was laid down on 2 March, 2018, and floated on 26 December, 2019. A week before the delivery to the client, running tests were successfully conducted. Antey said it will run its own test fishing trials in the Barents Sea in June and then have the ship travel to the Far East via the Northern Sea Route in the Russian Arctic.

The 50-meter long, 28-strong ship has a deadweight of 1,900 metric tons (MT). It is designed for catching Kamchatka, opilio, and blue manna crab via "Japanese"-type cone traps. The ship is equipped with refrigerated sea-water tanks filled at two degrees Celsius (35.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The volume of the tanks is 461 cubic meters, or 90 MT.

Two more identical vessels are now being built by the Pella shipyard for the Far Eastern company Ostrovnoy-Crab LLC as part of that company's implementation of the investment quota program for the extraction of crab, Pella said on its website.

Antey CEO Ivan Mikhnov said that the Rus' was built on time, despite some difficulties due to the novelty of the project for both the client and the shipyard  The ship’s designer was the Russian company Petrobalt, making it an outlier, as most new ships being built in Russia under the investment program have been designed by foreign firms.

Antey’s representatives were involved in the process of design and construction and the selection of equipment, allowing hem to gain new valuable experience, Mikhnov said. This experience will be valuable as the construction gets underway of additional six crab vessels the company must have built to qualify for the investment quota program. With each ship costing RUB 1 billion (USD 14.23 million, EUR 12.81 million), Antey plans on spending RUB 7 billion to RUB 9 billion (USD 99.62 million to USD 128 million, EUR 89.72 million to EUR 115.38 million) on the project.

Those six boats will be built at the Nakhodka Ship Repair Yard. Antey’s contract with Nakhodka was signed in the middle of April 2020, with delivery of the vessels promised within five years. However, many Russian shipyards have been struggling to deliver on time, as most have no experience building fishing vessels.

Photo courtesy of Pella Shipyard