Samherji chooses Maritech Eye to further automate processing facility

Samherji has contracted with Molde, Norway-based aquaculture technology company Maritech to use its processing technology at its Utgerdarfelag Akureyringa (UA) whitefish processing plant in Akureyri, Iceland.

Samherji plans to use the Maritech Eye technology – a visual quality assessment system that can quickly identify and sort salmon or whitefish at industrial speeds. According to a release from Maritech, the first unit is ready to be integrated into one of Samherji’s processing lines to gain operational experience for future installations.

“For the last months we have been developing, with Maritech, a system that focuses on finding the main defects in fillets; blood spots, nematodes, gaping, black lining and shape deviations,” Samherji UA Production Manager Sunneva Ósk Guðmundsdóttir said. “The objective has been to identify the fillets that require no trimming and thus can go directly to portioning. This gives considerably more yield in production and reduces the manual workload for pre-trimming.”

Maritech its standard setup for the technology will detect and document blood spots, gaping, nematodes, salmofan (color), fat, and species. The system then uses the information to give each fish a quality score, allowing the processing line to quickly grade and sort fish.

The system also provides a unique identification for every fish in the system, increasing the traceability of products.

“UA/Samherji has led the way in this project the whole time and has been pioneering the commercial utilization of this technology in whitefish processing,” Konrad Hatlemark Olavsson, with Maritech Iceland, said. “We are grateful for our cooperation, and we are confident we can make a great difference and create considerable value for Samherji.”

Maritech recently posted its FY2022 results, showcasing aa 21 percent increase in revenue to NOK 185.3 million (USD 17.2 million, EUR 15.7 million). The results represented the second-straight year of positive revenue, after posting NOK 18 million (USD 1.6 million, EUR 1.5 million) in losses in 2020.  

Maritech also recently announced it partnered with Kingfish Maine, with the former providing the latter its Maritech Packing and Maritech Purchase & Sales cloud software, along with the LINSiGHT and a Manufacturing Execution System.  

Photo courtesy of Samherji/Maritech